Android Studio 3.0 is ready to download today. Announced at Google I/O 2017,
Android Studio 3.0 is a large update focused on accelerating your app
development on Android.
This release of Android Studio is packed with many new updates, but there are
three major feature areas you do not want to miss, including: a new suite of app
profiling tools to quickly diagnose performance issues, support for the Kotlin
programming language, and a new set of tools and wizards to accelerate your
development on the latest Android Oreo APIs.
We also invested time in improving stability and performance across many areas
of Android Studio. Thanks to your feedback during the preview versions of
Android Studio 3.0! If you are looking for high stability, want to build high
quality apps for Android Oreo, develop with the Kotlin language, or use the
latest in Android app performance tools, then you should download Android Studio
3.0 today.
Check out the the list of new features in Android Studio 3.0 below, organized by
key developer flows.
What’s new in Android Studio 3.0
Develop
Kotlin Programming Language -As announced
at Google I/O 2017, the Kotlin
programming language is now officially supported for Android development. Kotlin
is an expressive and concise language that is interoperable with existing
Android languages and runtimes, which means you can use as little or as much of
the language in your app as you want. Kotlin is a production-ready language
used by many popular Android apps on Google Play today.
This release of Android Studio is the first milestone of bundles the Kotlin
language support inside the IDE. Many of your favorite features such as code
completion and syntax highlighting work well this release and we will continue
to improve the remaining editor features in upcoming release. You can choose to
add Kotlin to your project using the built-in conversion tool found under
Code → Convert Java File to Kotlin File, or
create a Kotlin enabled project with the New Project Wizard. Lean more about
Kotlin language support
in Android Studio.
Kotlin Language Conversion in Android Studio
Java 8 Language features -In Android
Studio 3.0, we are continuing to improve the support for Java 8 language
features. With the migration
to a javac based toolchain, using Java 8 language features in your project
is even easier. To update your project to support the new Java 8 Language
toolchain, simply update your Source and Target compatibility
levels to 1.8 in the Project Structure dialog. Learn
more.
Layout Editor -The component tree in the
Layout Editor has better drag-and-drop view insertions, and a new error
panel. Learn
more.
Adaptive Icon Wizard -The new wizard
creates a set of launcher icon assets and provides previews of how your
adaptive icon will look with different launcher screen icon masks. Support for
VectorDrawable layers is new for this release. Learn
more.
XML Fonts & Downloadable Fonts -If you
target Android Oreo (API Level 26 and higher) for your Android app, you can now
add custom fonts & downloadable fonts using XML with Android Studio
3.0.
Android Things Support -Android Studio
3.0 includes a new set of templates in the New Project wizard and the New Module
wizard to develop for the Android Things platform. Learn more.
IntelliJ Platform Update: Android Studio 3.0 includes the
IntelliJ 2017.1 release, which has features such as Java 8 language refactoring,
parameter hints, semantic highlighting, draggable breakpoints, enhanced version
control search, and more. Learn
more.
Build
Instant App Support -With this release of
Android Studio, you can add Instant
Apps features to your project. Available for
full development earlier this year, Instant Apps are lightweight Android
apps that your users can immediately run without installation. Learn
more.
Build Speed Improvements -To further
improve the speed of Gradle for larger scale projects with many modules, we
introduced a rare breaking API change in the Android Gradle Plugin to
improve scalability and build times. This change is one of reasons we jumped
version numbers from Android Studio 2.4 to 3.0. If you depend on APIs provided
by the previous Gradle plugin you should validate compatibility with the new
plugin and migrate to the new APIs. To test, update the plugin version in your
build.gradle file. Learn
more.
Google's Maven Repository -To facilitate
smaller and faster updates, Android Studio 3.0 utilizes Google's Maven
Repository by default instead of using the Android SDK Manager to find updates
to Android Support Library, Google Play Services, and Firebase Maven
dependencies. Used in combination with the latest command line SDK
Manager tool and Gradle,
Continuous Integration builds should migrate to Google's Maven Repository for
future Maven repository updates. Learn
more.
Test & Debug
Google Play System Images -We also
updated the emulator system images for Android Oreo to now include the Google
Play Store. Bundling in the Google Play store allows you to do end-to-end
testing of apps with Google Play, and provides a convenient way to keep Google
Play services up-to-date in your Android Virtual Device (AVD). Just as Google
Play services updates on physical devices, you can trigger the same updates on
your AVDs.
Google Play Store in Android Emulator
To ensure app security and a consistent experience with physical devices, the
emulator system images with the Google Play store included are signed with a
release key. This means you will not be able to get elevated privileges. If you
require elevated privileges (root) to aid with your app troubleshooting, you can
use the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) emulator system images that do not
include Google apps or services. Learn more.
OpenGL ES 3.0 Support in Android Emulator -The latest version of the Android Emulator has OpenGL ES 3.0 support
for Android Oreo system images along with significant improvements in OpenGL ES
2.0 graphics performance for older emulator system images. Learn
more.
App Bug Reporter in Android Emulator -To
help in documenting bugs in your app, we have added an easier way to generate a
bug report with the Android Emulator with all the necessary configuration
settings and space to capture your repro steps. Learn
more.
Proxy Support in Android -If you use a
proxy to access the Internet, we have added a user interface to manage the HTTP
proxy settings used by the emulator. Lean
more.
Android Emulator Quick Boot (Canary) -One
of the most common pain points we hear is that the emulator takes too long to
boot. To address this concern, we are excited to preview a new feature to solve
this called Quick Boot, which significantly speeds up your emulator start time.
Once enabled, the first time you start an AVD a cold boot will occur (just like
powering on a device), but all subsequent starts are fast and the system is
restored to the state at which you closed the emulator (similar to waking a
device). If you want to try it out, ensure you are on the canary update release
channel and then you will find v26.2.0 of the Android Emulator in the SDK
Manager. Learn
more.
APK Debugging -Android Studio 3.0 allows
you to debug an arbitrary APK. This functionally is especially helpful for those
who develop your Android C++ code in another IDE, but want to debug and analyze
the APK in the context of Android Studio. As long as you have a debuggable
version of your APK, you can use the new APK Debugging features to analyze,
profile & debug the APK. Moreover, if you have access to the sources of your
APK, you can link the source to the APK debugging flow for a higher fidelity
debugging process. Get started by simply selecting Profile or debug
APK from the Android Studio Welcome Screen or File → Profile or
debug APK. Learn
More.
APK Debugging
Layout Inspector -In this release we have
added a few additional enhancements for the Layout Inspector including better
grouping of properties into common categories, as well as search functionality
in both the View Tree and Properties Panels. Learn
more.
Device File Explorer -The new Device File
Explorer in Android Studio 3.0 allows you to view the file and directory
structure of your Android device or emulator. As you are testing your app, you
can now quickly preview and modify app data files directly in Android Studio.
Learn
more.
Android Test Orchestrator Support - When used with
AndroidJUnitRunner 1.0 or higher, the Android Gradle plugin 3.0 supports the use
of the Android Test Orchestrator. The Android Test Orchestrator allows each of
your app's tests to run within its own Instrumentation.
Learn
more.
Optimize
Android Profiler -Android Studio 3.0
includes a brand new suite of tools to help debug performance problems in your
app. We completely rewrote the previous set of Android Monitor tools, and
replaced them with the Android Profiler. Once you deploy your app to a running
device or emulator, click on the Android Profiler tab and you
will now have access to a real-time & unified view of the CPU, Memory, & Network
activity for your app. Each of the performance events are mapped to the UI event
timeline which highlights touch events, key presses, and activity changes so
that you have more context on when and why a certain event happened. Click on
each timeline to dig into each performance aspect of your app. Learn
more.
Android Profiler - Combined timeline view.
CPU Profiler
Memory Profiler
Network Profiler
APK Analyzer Improvements -We also
updated APK Analyzer with additional enhancements to help you further optimize
the size of your APK. Learn
more.
To recap, Android Studio 3.0 includes these new major features:
If you are using a previous version of Android Studio, you can upgrade to
Android Studio 3.0 today or you can download the update from the official
Android Studio Preview download
page. As mentioned in this blog, there are some breaking Gradle Plugin API
changes to support new features in the IDE. Therefore, you should also update
your Android Gradle plugin version to 3.0.0 in your current project to test and
validate your app project setup.
We appreciate any feedback on things you like, issues or features you would like
to see. If you find a bug or issue, feel free to file an
issue. Connect with us -- the Android Studio development team ‐ on our Google+ page or on Twitter
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