Google I/O 2022: What’s new in Android Development Tools
Android Developers Blog
Posted by Juan Sebastian Oviedo, Senior Product Manager
Today at Google I/O 2022, we announced an exciting set of new features available in Android Studio Dolphin Beta and Electric Eel Canary, both available for download. You told us that you want to be more productive while creating Android apps, so we focused on improvements that make the development experience faster and more informative.
In the Android Studio Dolphin release you will find the following features and improvements that you can start using in the Beta channel, which is close to stable quality:
- View Compose animations and coordinate them with Animation Preview.
- Define annotation classes to easily include and apply multiple Compose preview definitions at once.
- Track recomposition counts for your composables in the Layout Inspector.
- Easily pair and control Wear OS emulators and launch tiles, watch faces, and complications directly from Android Studio.
- Diagnose app issues faster with Logcat V2.
For even more cutting edge features, you can take a sneak peek at the Android Studio Electric Eel release in the Canary channel:
- View dependency insights from the new Google Play SDK Index, a public portal with information about popular dependencies/SDKs. If a specific version of a library has been marked as “outdated” by its author, a corresponding Lint warning will appear when viewing that dependency definition. This enables you to discover and update dependency issues during development instead of later when you go to publish your app on the Play Console. You can learn more about this new tool here.
- See Firebase Crashlytics reports directly in Android Studio using the new App Quality Insights window. The App Quality Insights window allows you to navigate from stack traces into your code with a few simple clicks. The IDE also highlights lines of code in the editor as you're editing files containing recent crashes. This saves you time by presenting actionable crash information from users directly in the IDE, so you can focus on providing your users with the best app experience.
- Test your app’s UI on representative reference devices using a single resizable Android Emulator. Instead of having to set up emulators specifically for tablets, phones, or desktops, you can use a single resizable emulator and change its configuration without needing to re-deploy to test your app.
- With the experimental Live Edit feature, make code changes and have those immediately reflected in the Compose Preview and running app on an emulator or physical device.
These features will be promoted to more stable channels once we have your feedback and make improvements, so please try them out.
To see all the new features in action, watch the What’s new in Android Developer Tools session.
Below is a list of key new features and improvements in Android Studio Dolphin:
Jetpack Compose
- Compose Animation Coordination - See all your animations at once and coordinate them in Animation Preview. You can also freeze a specific animation.
Compose Animation Coordination
- Compose Multipreview Annotations - Define an annotation class that includes multiple Preview definitions and use that new annotation to generate those previews at once. Use this new annotation to preview multiple devices, fonts, and themes at the same time — without repeating those definitions for every single composable.
Multipreview annotations
- Compose Recomposition Counts in Layout Inspector - View recomposition counts for a Compose app in the Layout Inspector. Recomposition counts and skip counts can optionally be shown in the Component Tree and Attributes panels. Learn more.
Compose Recomposition Counts
Wear OS
- Wear OS Emulator Pairing Assistant - Using the Wear OS Emulator Pairing Assistant, you can now see Wear Devices in the Device Manager, and pair multiple watch emulators with a single phone. You also don't have to re-pair devices as often because Android Studio remembers pairings after being closed.
Wear OS Emulator Pairing Assistant
- Wear OS Emulator Side Toolbar - Use Wear-specific emulator buttons that resemble and simulate physical buttons, including main buttons, palm buttons, and tilt buttons.
Wear OS Emulator Side Toolbar
- Wear OS Direct Surface Launch - Create Run/Debug configurations for Wear OS tiles, watch faces, and complications, and launch them directly from Android Studio.
New Wear OS Run/Debug configuration types
Development tools
- Logcat V2 - Rebuilt from the ground up, the new Logcat makes it easier to parse, query, and track logs. Logcat V2 includes new formatting that makes it easier to scan useful information, new split views to allow you to track more at a glance, and a brand new powerful syntax for filtering logs. Learn more.
Logcat V2
- Gradle Managed Devices - Describe the virtual devices you need for your automated tests as a part of your build, and let Gradle take care of the rest. From SDK downloading, to device provisioning and setup, to test execution and teardown, Gradle manages the lifecycle of your virtual devices during instrumentation tests. Gradle is also able to apply intelligent functionality, such as snapshot management, test caching, and test sharding to ensure your tests run efficiently, quickly, and consistently. Gradle Managed Devices also introduces a completely new type of device, called the Automated Test Device, which optimizes devices for automated tests, resulting in significant reduction in CPU and memory usage during test execution. Learn more.
Gradle Managed Devices
Below is a list of key new features and improvements in Android Studio Electric Eel:
Jetpack Compose
- Live Edit - Make code changes to Composables in Android Studio and see those changes reflected immediately in the Compose Preview and your emulator or physical device. Live Edit is an opt-in feature that you can enable in Android Studio settings. Learn more.
Live Edit on emulator
Live Edit on Preview
Google Play and Firebase
- SDK Insights - Get Lint warnings for SDKs/libraries that have been marked as outdated by their authors in the Google Play SDK Index. Update outdated dependency versions during development to avoid issues when your app is submitted to the Play Console.
Google Play SDK Index insights
- App Quality Insights from Firebase Crashlytics - Discover, investigate, and resolve issues reported by Crashlytics in Android Studio and within the context of your local source code. This integration helps reduce friction when navigating from crashes to code (and from code to crash), and surfaces important contextual data about each crash to help you reproduce issues locally.
App Quality Insights from Firebase Crashlytics
Large Screens
- Resizable Emulator - Rapidly toggle between representative reference devices to quickly test various application layout states with a single running emulator instance. You can create these emulators by selecting the “Resizable” type in the Device Manager’s “Create device” flow.
Resizable Emulator
- Visual Linting - Discover and fix your layout issues across different devices (for example, when a button is hidden out of bounds on a larger tablet) by opening the Layout Validation panel. We automatically run your layout to check for Visual Lint issues across different screen sizes.
Visual Linting
Development Tools
- Emulated Bluetooth - You can now discover and connect two phone emulators using virtual Bluetooth. This feature is available on Android Emulator 31.3.8 and higher with system image T (API 33). We plan to add more support for creating sample virtual peripherals, such as beacons and heart rate monitors, and integration testing for your Bluetooth features!
Pairing two Android Emulators using Emulated Bluetooth
- Device Mirroring - Minimize the number of interruptions when developing by streaming your device display directly to Android Studio. Device Mirroring gives you the ability to interact with a physical device using the Running Devices window in Studio. To enable this feature, go to Preferences > Experimental and select Device Mirroring. Once enabled, plug in your device and open the Running Devices window to begin streaming your display.
Device Mirroring
To recap, these new features and improvements are available in the Android Studio Dolphin Beta, near stable quality:
Jetpack Compose
- Compose Animation Coordination
- Compose Multipreview Annotations
- Compose Recomposition Counts in Layout Inspector
Wear OS
- Wear OS Emulator Pairing Assistant
- Wear OS Emulator Side Toolbar
- Wear OS Direct Surface Launch
Development tools
- Logcat V2
- Gradle Managed Devices
These brand new features and improvements are available in the Android Studio Electric Eel Canary:
Jetpack Compose
- Live Edit
Google Play and Firebase
- SDK Insights
- App Quality Insights from Firebase Crashlytics
Large Screens
- Resizable Emulator
- Visual Linting
Development tools
- Emulated Bluetooth
- Device Mirroring
Getting started
Android Studio Dolphin Beta and Electric Eel Canary are both available for download. You can install them side by side with the current stable version of Android Studio following these instructions. The Beta release is near stable release quality, but bugs might still exist, so, if you do find an issue, please let us know so we can work to fix it. Likewise, if you find an issue or have feedback for the features in the Canary release, please let us know.
We really appreciate your feedback on issues and feature requests. You can follow us—the Android Studio development team—on Twitter and on Medium.
Check out the preview release notes for more details.
