Android Studio is a new Android development environment based on IntelliJ
IDEA. Similar to Eclipse with the
ADT Plugin, Android Studio provides integrated Android developer tools
for development and debugging. On top of the
capabilities you expect from IntelliJ, Android Studio offers:
- Gradle-based build support.
- Android-specific refactoring and quick fixes.
- Lint tools to catch performance, usability, version compatibility and other problems.
- ProGuard and app-signing capabilities.
- Template-based wizards to create common Android designs and components.
- A rich layout editor that allows you to drag-and-drop UI components, preview layouts on
multiple screen configurations, and much more.
- Built-in support for Google Cloud Platform, making it easy to integrate Google Cloud
Messaging and App Engine as server-side components.
Caution: Android Studio is currently available as
an
early access preview. Several features
are either incomplete or not yet implemented and you may encounter bugs. If you are not
comfortable using an unfinished product, you may want to instead
download (or continue to use) the
ADT Bundle (Eclipse with the ADT Plugin).
Updating from older versions
If you already have Android Studio installed, in most cases, you can upgrade to the latest
version by installing a patch. From within Android Studio, select
Help > Check for updates (on Mac,
Android Studio >
Check for updates) to see whether an update is available.
If an update is not available,
follow the
installation instructions below and replace your existing
installation.
Caution: Replacing your existing installation of
Android Studio will remove any additional SDK packages you've installed, such as target
platforms, system images, and sample apps. To preserve these, copy them from your current
SDK directory under Android Studio to a temporary location
before installing the update. Then move them back once the update is complete.
If you fail to copy these packages, then you can instead download them again through
the Android SDK Manager.
Also note that due to the update to Android Gradle Plugin 0.6, you will encounter errors when opening
existing projects. See the
Troubleshooting notes below for
information about how to resolve them.
Installing Android Studio
- Download the Android Studio package from above.
- Install Android Studio and the SDK tools:
Windows:
- Launch the downloaded EXE file,
android-studio-bundle-<version>.exe
.
- Follow the setup wizard to install Android Studio.
Known issue:
On some Windows systems, the launcher script does not find where Java is installed.
If you encounter this problem,
you need to set an environment variable indicating the correct location.
Select Start menu > Computer > System Properties >
Advanced System Properties. Then open Advanced tab > Environment
Variables and add a new system variable JAVA_HOME
that points to
your JDK folder, for example C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_21
.
Mac OS X:
- Open the downloaded DMG file,
android-studio-bundle-<version>.dmg
.
- Drag and drop Android Studio into the Applications folder.
Known issue:
Depending on your security settings, when you attempt to open Android Studio, you might
see a warning that says the package is damaged and should be moved to the trash. If this
happens, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy and under
Allow applications downloaded from, select Anywhere.
Then open Android Studio again.
Linux:
- Unpack the downloaded Tar file,
android-studio-bundle-<version>.tgz
, into an appropriate
location for your applications.
- To launch Android Studio, navigate to the
android-studio/bin/
directory
in a terminal and execute studio.sh
.
You may want to add android-studio/bin/
to your PATH environmental
variable so that you can start Android Studio from any directory.
That's it! You're ready to start developing apps with Android Studio.
Note: On Windows and Mac, the individual tools and
other SDK packages are saved within the Android Studio application directory.
To access the tools directly, use a terminal to navigate into the application and locate
the sdk/
directory. For example:
Windows: \Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Android\android-studio\sdk\
Mac: /Applications/Android\ Studio.app/sdk/
For a list of some known issues, see
tools.android.com/knownissues.
Starting a Project
When you launch Android Studio for the first time, you'll see a Welcome
screen that offers several ways to get started:
- To start building a new app, click New Project.
This starts the New Project wizard, which helps you set up a project using an app template.
- To import an existing Android app project, click Import Project.
Note: If you previously developed your Android project
with Eclipse, you should first use the new export feature in the ADT plugin to prepare
your project with the new Gradle build system. For more information, read
Migrating from Eclipse.
For additional help using Android Studio, read
Tips and Tricks.
As you continue developing apps, you may need to install additional versions
of Android for the emulator and other packages such as the
Android Support Library.
To install more packages, use
the
SDK Manager, which you can
open from Android Studio by clicking
SDK Manager
in the toolbar.
Revisions
Note: Periodic updates are pushed to Android Studio
without requiring you to update from here. To manually check for updates, select
Help > Check for updates (on Mac, select Android Studio >
Check for updates).
Troubleshooting
Error: Gradle project refresh failed
Android Studio 0.2.0 has updated the Gradle plug-in to 0.5.0, which is not backwards compatible.
When opening a project that uses an older version of the plug-in, Studio will display the error
shown in figure 1 in the upper right corner of the IDE.
To resolve the error, you must change the version of the Android Gradle plug-in to 0.5.0.
- Click the link in the error dialog Search in build.gradle files. If the dialog
is no longer visible, click Event Log
in the bottom-right corner of the IDE,
then click Search in build.gradle files.
- Double-click the line under the build.gradle usage. For example:
classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:0.4. This opens the project
build.gradle
file.
- Edit the
classpath
to change the gradle version to 0.5.+
.
For example:
dependencies {
classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:0.5.+'
}
- Save the file and rebuild your project.
Error: Failed to import Gradle project
If, after updating to Android Studio 0.2.x and creating or opening a project, you receive an
error stating
"Could not find any version that matches
com.android.support:support-v4:13.0.+", then you must install the
Android Support
Repository. This was likely caused because you're pointing Android Studio to an external
Android SDK location that does not have the new Maven repository included with Android Studio
0.2.x. This new Maven repository is used by the new build system for the Support Library, instead
of using the Support Library JAR files, so must be present in the SDK.
- Open the Android SDK Manager.
- Expand the Extras directory
and install Android Support Repository.
If you've encountered other problems in Android Studio, look at the following page
for possible resolutions to known issues:
http://tools.android.com/knownissues.