Android Studio is the official IDE for Android application development, based on IntelliJ IDEA. On top of the capabilities you expect from IntelliJ, Android Studio offers:
apk file generationIf you're new to Android Studio or the IntelliJ IDEA interface, this page provides an introduction to some key Android Studio features.
For specific Android Studio how-to documentation, see the pages in the Workflow section, such as Managing Projects from Android Studio and Building and Running from Android Studio. For a summary of the latest changes to Android Studio, see the Android Studio Release Notes.
By default, Android Studio displays your project files in the Android project view. This view shows a flattened version of your project's structure that provides quick access to the key source files of Android projects and helps you work with the Gradle-based build system. The Android project view:
Figure 1. Show the Android project view.
Figure 2. Show project build files.
The Android project view shows all the build files at the top level of the project hierarchy under Gradle Scripts. Each project module appears as a folder at the top level of the project hierarchy and contains these four elements at the top level:
java/ - Source files for the module.manifests/ - Manifest files for the module.res/ - Resource files for the module.Gradle Scripts/ - Gradle build and property files.For example, Android project view groups all the instances of the
ic_launcher.png resource for different screen densities under the same element.
Note: The project structure on disk differs from this flattened representation. To switch to back to the segregated project view, select Project from the Project drop-down.
When you use the Project view in Android Studio, you should notice that the project structure appears different than you may be used to in Eclipse. Each instance of Android Studio contains a project with one or more application modules. Each application module folder contains the complete source sets for that module, including {@code src/main/} and {@code src/androidTest/} directories, resources, build file and the Android manifest. For the most part, you will need to modify the files under each module's {@code src/main/} directory for source code updates, the gradle.build file for build specification and the files under {@code src/androidTest/} directory for test case creation.
You can also customize the view of the project files to focus on specific aspects of your app development:
For example, selecting the Problems view of your project displays links to the source files containing any recognized coding and syntax errors, such as missing an XML element closing tag in a layout file.
For more information, see IntelliJ project organization and Managing Projects.
The Android build system is the toolkit you use to build, test, run and package your apps. This build system replaces the Ant system used with Eclipse ADT. It can run as an integrated tool from the Android Studio menu and independently from the command line. You can use the features of the build system to:
The flexibility of the Android build system enables you to achieve all of this without modifying your app's core source files. To build an Android Studio project, see Building and Running from Android Studio. To configure custom build settings in an Android Studio project, see Configuring Gradle Builds.
Android Studio provides a number of improvements to assist you in debugging and improving the performance of your code, including an improved virtual device management, inline debugging, and performance analysis tools.
AVD Manager has updated screens with links to help you select the most popular device configurations, screen sizes and resolutions for your app previews.
Click the Android Virtual Device Manager
in the toolbar to open it and create
new virtual devices for running your app in the emulator.
The AVD Manager comes with emulators for Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 devices and also supports creating custom Android device skins based on specific emulator properties and assigning those skins to hardware profiles. Android Studio installs the Intel® x86 Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM) emulator accelerator and creates a default emulator for quick app prototyping.
For more information, see Managing AVDs.
Use inline debugging to enhance your code walk-throughs in the debugger view with inline verification of references, expressions, and variable values. Inline debug information includes:
To enable inline debugging, in the Debug window click the Settings icon
and select the
check box for Show Values In Editor.
Android Studio provides a memory and CPU monitor view so you can more easily monitor your app's performance and memory usage to track CPU usage, find deallocated objects, locate memory leaks, and track the amount of memory the connected device is using. With your app running on a device or emulator, click the Android tab in the lower left corner of the runtime window to launch the Android runtime window. Click the Memory or CPU tab.
Figure 4. Monitor memory and CPU usage.
When you're monitoring memory usage in Android Studio you can, at the same time, initiate garbage collection and dump the Java heap to a heap snapshot in an Android-specific HPROF binary format file. The HPROF viewer displays classes, instances of each class, and a reference tree to help you track memory usage and find memory leaks.
Figure 5. HPROF viewer with heap dump.
To create a snapshot of the Android app heap memory, click the
Dump Java Heap icon (
)
in the Memory Monitor. Android Studio creates the heap snapshot file with the filename
Snapshot-yyyy.mm.dd-hh.mm.ss.hprof
in the Captures tab. Double-click the heap snapshot file to open the HPROF viewer.
To convert a heap dump to standard HPROF format in Android Studio, right-click a heap snapshot in the Captures view and select Export to standard .hprof.
Android Studio allows you to track memory allocation as it monitors memory use. Tracking memory allocation allows you to monitor where objects are being allocated when you perform certain actions. Knowing these allocations enables you to adjust the method calls related to those actions to optimize your app's performance and memory use.
Figure 6. Allocation tracker.
Perform the following steps to track and analyze allocations:
) in the
Memory Monitor. Android Studio starts tracking memory allocations.Allocation-yyyy.mm.dd-hh.mm.ss.alloc. The
resulting file appears in the Captures tab. The allocation viewer allows you to view and analyze the allocations your app made while running.
The Android SDK tools, such as Systrace, logcat, and Traceview, generate performance and debugging data for detailed app analysis.
To view the available generated data files, click Captures in the left
corner of the runtime window. In the list of the generated files, double-click a file to view
the data. Right-click any .hprof files to convert them to a standard
.hprof file format.
In Android Studio, the configured lint
and other IDE inspections run automatically whenever you compile your program. In addition to the
configured {@code lint} checks, additional
IntelliJ code inspections and annotation validation run to streamline code
review.
Android Studio enables several lint checks
to ensure:
Cipher.getInstance() is used with safe valuesHovering over an inspection error displays the full issue explanation inline for easy error resolution. There is also a helpful hyperlink at the end of the error message for additional error information.
With Android Studio, you can also run {@code lint} inspections for a specific build variant, or
for all build variants. You can configure the {@code lint} inspections that run by adding a
lintOptions property to the Android settings in the build.gradle
file.
android {
lintOptions {
// set to true to turn off analysis progress reporting by lint
quiet true
// if true, stop the gradle build if errors are found
abortOnError false
// if true, only report errors
ignoreWarnings true
}
You can also manage inspection profiles and configure inspections within Android Studio. Choose File > Settings >, expand the Editor options, and select Inspections. The Inspection Configuration page appears with the supported inspections.
Figure 5. Configure inspections.
Note: To change the behavior of specific inspection notifications, change the inspection severity, for example from warning to error.
To manually run inspections in Android Studio, choose Analyze > Inspect Code. The Inspections Scope dialog appears so you can specify the desired inspection profile and scope.
You can also run {@code lint} inspections from the command line in your SDK directory.
sdk$ lint [flags]
Note: The {@code lint} --show and --list flags can be used to display the available issues and explanations.
For more information, see Improving Your Code with {@code lint} and lint tool.
Android Studio supports annotations for variables, parameters, and return values to help you catch bugs, such as null pointer exceptions and resource type conflicts. The Android SDK Manager packages the {@link android.support.annotation Support-Annotations} library in the Android Support Repository for use with Android Studio. Android Studio validates the configured annotations during code inspection.
To add annotations to your code in Android Studio, first add a dependency for the {@link android.support.annotation Support-Annotations} library:
icon to include a
Library dependency.support-annotations and
click Ok. The build.gradle file is updated with the support-annotations
dependency.
You can also manually add this dependency to your build.gradle file, as shown in
the following example.
dependencies {
compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:22.0.0'
compile 'com.android.support:support-annotations:22.0.0'
}
A nullability analysis scans the contracts throughout the method hierarchies in your code to detect:
The analysis then automatically inserts the appropriate null annotations in the detected locations.
To run a nullability analysis in Android Studio, select the Analyze > Infer Nullity menu option. Android Studio inserts the Android {@link android.support.annotation.Nullable @Nullable} and {@link android.support.annotation.NonNull @NonNull} annotations in detected locations in your code. After running a null analysis, it's good practice to verify the injected annotations.
Note: The nullability analysis may insert the IntelliJ
@Nullable and
@NotNull annotations instead of the Android null annotations. When running
a null analysis, manually search and replace any IntelliJ annotations or include
com.intellij:annotations:12.0 as a compile dependency in your
build.gradle file. This example includes the IntelliJ annotations 12.0 library as a
dependency in the build.gradle file:
dependencies {
compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:22.0.0'
compile 'com.android.support:support-annotations:22.0.0'
compile 'com.intellij:annotations:12.0'
}
You can also manually add nullability, resource, and enumerated annotations throughout your code
to perform validations for a variety of reference values, such as
R.string resources,
Drawable
resources,
Color resources,
and enumerated constants.
Run Analyze > Inspect Code to validate the configured annotations.
For a complete list of the supported annotations, either use the auto-complete feature to display
the available options for the import android.support.annotation. statement or
view the contents of the
{@link android.support.annotation Support-Annotations}
library.
For more details about Android annotations, see Improving Code Inspection with Annotations.
Android Studio allows you to work with layouts in both a Design View
Figure 6. Hello World App with Design View.
and a Text View.
Easily select and preview layout changes for different device images, display densities, UI modes, locales, and Android versions (multi-API version rendering).
Figure 8. Multi-API version rendering.
From the Design View, you can drag and drop elements from the Palette to the Preview or Component Tree. The Text View allows you to directly edit the XML settings, while previewing the device display.
When you build and run your app with Android Studio, you can view adb and device log messages (logcat) by clicking Android at the bottom of the window.
If you want to debug your app with the
Android Debug Monitor, you can launch it by
clicking Monitor
in the toolbar. The Debug Monitor is where you can find the complete set of
DDMS tools for profiling your app,
controlling device behaviors, and more. It also includes the Hierarchy Viewer tools to help
optimize your layouts.