Does minSdkVersion really need to be 24 for AR Optional apps?

[tangobravo]

The current getting started doc at https://developers.google.com/ar/develop/java/enable-arcore mentions the minSdkVersion is 24 for both AR Required and AR Optional apps.

The last time I integrated ARCore into an AR Optional app this was 14 (it was a while ago!). I can't see any mention of this changing in the release notes. The last mention of a change I could see is 1.31 suggesting it was being increased to 19.

Archive.org shows a change in the getting started docs from 19 -> 24 in late 2022, when it was showing 1.33 as the version in the gradle snippet.

I'd like to understand the true minSdkVersion for an AR Optional app - there's currently around 4% of devices with API levels 19-23 so for an app where the AR Core part is optional it's not a completely negligible percentage yet.

[devbridie]

Hey,
No matter whether the app is AR Required or AR Optional, ARCore requires SDK version 24 to run. On SDK 19+, you can use ARCore to call checkAvailability, which will never succeed on SDK <24.

I'm seeing that the Java/C docs are unclear on this, so I'm updating it to how it's stated in the Unity doc: AR Optional has minSdkVersion: Android 4.4 (API Level 19), though running any AR functionality requires at least Android 7.0 (API Level 24).

[tangobravo]

Thanks!

Along with the tables in the "Enable AR" docs, there's also text about specifying minSdkVersion of at least 24 in the manifest in the part that is shared between Required / Optional apps that could have a little additional clarification as a comment.