Google makes its ARCore Depth API available for developers on Android and Unity to build AR experiences
ARCore is Google's SDK for creating augmented reality experiences on Android and iOS. On Android devices, it's delivered as part of the Google Play Services for AR app.
Context & Ripple Effects
When Google first showed the Depth API in December 2019, it was gated to its own surfaces — Scene Viewer, AR in Search, and the Houzz app. This release opens the same depth maps and occlusion to every developer building on Android or Unity, delivered through Google Play Services for AR rather than requiring new hardware.
It is also the next step in a deliberate ladder: since the 2017 ARCore preview launched to chase iOS' ARKit, Google has added Cloud Anchors collaboration, then an Augmented Faces API that works even without a depth sensor. Within a year of this opening, Google extended the stack again with richer raw depth maps plus recording and playback tools — the cadence matters more than any single API.
First-order effects
- Android and Unity developers can now ship occlusion-aware AR experiences that were previously exclusive to Google's own apps and partners like Houzz, collapsing that feature gap overnight.
Second-order effects
- Because depth ships through the Play Services for AR app rather than OEM firmware, Google can upgrade AR perception across the Android installed base independently of slow manufacturer update cycles — pressuring device makers whose hardware depth sensors were a differentiator.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — software-synthesized depth in 2020, raw depth maps in 2021 — the smartphone camera stack becomes standardized perception infrastructure that developers consume via Google's SDK, consolidating AR capability ownership at the platform layer.
The trend: Mobile AR is shifting from bespoke per-app computer vision toward platform-owned perception APIs, with Google using ARCore to make depth a default Android capability.