Top 3 things to know in Modern Android Development at Google I/O '23

Google I/O 2023 was filled with exciting updates and announcements. Modern Android Development (MAD) is all about making Android app development faster and easier! By creating libraries, tools and guidance to speed up your flow and help you write safer, better code so that you can focus on building amazing experiences.

Here are our top three announcements from Google I/O 2023:

#1: Get your development questions answered with Studio Bot

One of the announcements we’re most excited about is Studio Bot, an experimental new AI powered coding assistant, right in your IDE. You can ask it questions or use it to help fix errors — all without ever having to leave Android Studio or upload your source code.

Studio Bot is in its very early days, and is currently available for developers in the US. Download Android Studio canary to try it out and help it improve.

#2: Jetpack Compose has improvements for flow layouts, new Material components, and more

Jetpack Compose continues to be a big focus area, making it easier to build rich UIs. The May 2023 release included many new layouts and improvements such as horizontal and vertical pagers, flow layouts and new Material 3 components such as date and time pickers and bottom sheets.

There have also been large performance improvements to the modifier system, with more updates still in the works. For text alone, this update resulted in an average 22% performance gain that can be seen in the latest alpha release, and these improvements apply across the board. To get these benefits in your app, all you have to do is update your Compose version!

You can now also use Jetpack Compose to build home screen widgets with the Glance library and TV apps with Compose for TV.

#3: Use Kotlin everywhere, throughout your app

Since the official Kotlin for Android support announcement in 2017, we’ve continued to make improvements to helping you develop with Kotlin. Six years later, we are continuing to invest in improvements for Kotlin.

Firstly, we are collaborating with JetBrains on the new K2 compiler which is already showing significant improvements in compilation speed. We are actively working on integration into our tools such as Android Studio, Android Lint, KSP, Compose and more, and leveraging Google’s large Kotlin codebases to verify compatibility of the new compiler.

In addition, we now recommend using Kotlin for your build scripts and version catalogs. With Kotlin in your build and in your UI with Compose, you can now use Kotlin everywhere, throughout your app.

For more information, check out the “What’s new in Kotlin” talk.

And that's our top 3 Modern Android Development announcements from Google I/O 2023, check out this playlist for more.