Firebase launches Extensions to help easily solve common app problems

Today is the annual Firebase Summit where developers gather to learn more about the latest advancements to Google’s app development suite, and the biggest announcement of the event is Firebase Extensions, which allow you to quickly and easily add new capabilities to your app.

One of the key goals of Firebase is to make the lives of app developers easier through Google Cloud-based features like Cloud Firestore to act as a database and Cloud Messaging to send push notifications. The latest way Firebase is doing that is through new “Extensions” which are essentially pre-packaged solutions to problems you may have while developing.

For example, you can now install a Firebase Extension that takes images uploaded to your Cloud Storage automatically resize them to your app’s needs. Another example that should be particularly helpful as privacy laws become stricter is an Extension that can automatically delete a user’s content when they ask to delete their account.

Firebase already has all of the tools you need to create things like automatic image resizing, but now they’ve been conveniently bundled to be quickly suited to your needs and connected to your app. You also have the guarantee that the Firebase team has thoroughly tested, vetted, and debugged each extension before it was launched.

Firebase Extensions are now ready to install and use via the Firebase Console, and developer documentation is available on the Firebase website. More importantly, all of the Firebase Extensions are open source, meaning you can browse through the code on GitHub and learn more about how they’re able to do what they do.

The Firebase team is also accepting developer feedback if you don’t find a particular extension you were hoping for.