Android Builders Weblog: Android Studio Electrical Eel

By Sanu

February 14, 2023

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Posted by Paris Hsu, Product Supervisor, Android Developer

Android Studio Electrical Eel splash display

At present, we’re ⚡️electrified⚡️ to announce the newest secure launch of the official IDE for constructing Android functions: Android Studio Electrical Eel (2022.1.1)!

This launch consists of updates and new options that cowl throughout design, construct & dependencies, emulators & gadgets, and IntelliJ. Learn or watch beneath to study extra about how they will help you extra productively construct apps, and obtain the newest secure model at this time to attempt it out for your self!

Design

Compose Preview updates mechanically – In earlier variations of Android Studio, you needed to manually refresh Compose Previews after making modifications. In Electrical Eel, Previews replace mechanically after you make suitable code modifications in the identical file, permitting you to iterate in your UI sooner. In case your code change was incompatible, Previews will present a “Wants Rebuild” standing to point needing a full construct. When your code accommodates compilation errors throughout enhancing, Previews are quickly paused, after which resumed once more when the errors are mounted.

Moving image of a screenshot of Compose Preview updating automatically

Compose Preview updates mechanically

Compose Preview gadget spec – One other replace for Compose Preview is you could now edit the gadget parameter of the Preview annotation to specify the configuration of the gadget. You’ll be able to select from reference gadgets or create your personal, through which case autocomplete will assist you with what choices can be found and what values they settle for. This works collectively properly with multipreview annotations, which can be found since Dolphin.

Screenshot of Compose preview device spec

Compose Preview System Spec

Structure Inspector recomposition rendering highlights: To make it simpler to shortly see which of your composables are recomposing, Structure inspector now highlights recomposition. This lets you determine the place within the utility the latest exercise brought about the best modifications in recomposition counts. The UI components with the latest modifications are quickly overlaid with a shade. This makes it straightforward to trace down sudden or extreme recompositions taking place in your app. You’ll be able to study extra about utilizing the format inspector to debug recomposition in Jetpack Compose: Debugging Recomposition.

Moving image of screenshot showing Layout Inspector recomposition rendering highlights

Structure Inspector recomposition rendering highlights

Visible Linting for Views: New for XML layouts, Visible linting now runs within the background to examine for points throughout totally different kind elements, detecting issues akin to overlapping or non-visible components on a given gadget configuration.

For instance, within the animated display seize beneath, you possibly can see that the format file has two validation issues: a TextView lined by an ImageView on sure display sizes and an ImageView, which is partially out-of-bounds in some configurations. Clicking on the issue within the Issues panel will open the Structure Validation panel to see your layouts rendered for the assorted gadget sizes and spotlight the configurations with the chosen concern.

Moving image of screenshot showing Visual Linting for Views

Visible Linting for Views

Common Issues Panel: We’ve consolidated all the issues reported by varied instruments inside Android Studio into the brand new Issues panel. This consists of visible linting, navigation, and Compose associated points.

Screenshot showing the universal problems panel

Common Issues Panel

Construct & Dependencies

Obtain affect in Construct Analyzer: The Construct Analyzer device supplies you perception into what occurs throughout your builds. This now features a abstract of any dependency downloads that occurred. You should use this data to find out the affect of downloads in your construct, and to identify issues akin to downloads taking place throughout incremental builds.

The knowledge of the obtain affect is damaged down by repositories, so you possibly can see the place every dependency was downloaded from. You may also see if a repository takes a very long time to serve artifacts, or has a excessive variety of failed requests. If that’s the case, you need to take into account eradicating the repository, if doable, or shifting it decrease in your repository configuration, in order that different repositories take precedence over it.

Moving image of Screenshot showing the build analyzer

Obtain affect in Construct Analyzer

Improve Assistant post-upgrade report and rollback assist: The Improve Assistant that helps you improve your challenge’s Android Gradle Plugin model additionally bought extra useful in Electrical Eel. After performing a model improve, the assistant will try and sync your challenge, and report whether or not it was profitable. It now additionally offers you a abstract of what steps have been executed. Furthermore, if the challenge sync fails after the improve, you should use the brand new Revert button to undo the modifications to your construct recordsdata.

Moving image of Screenshot showing Upgrade Assistant post-upgrade report and rollback support

Improve Assistant post-upgrade report and rollback assist

SDK Index integration: We introduced Google Play SDK Index earlier this yr, which supplies you details about varied SDKs you could combine into your app. SDK builders can mark variations of their SDKs as outdated within the SDK index, and this data is now proven instantly in Android Studio.

SDK Index integration

Baseline Profile repair for App Bundles: Underneath sure circumstances Baseline Profiles might have been compressed when the app was constructed as an Android App Bundle. This resulted within the profile not being picked up when putting in the app domestically. On this native solely state of affairs, benchmark outcomes can be slower than anticipated. The bundletool model transport with Electrical Eel addresses and fixes this drawback.

Examine

All-new Logcat: Logcat has been rewritten from the bottom as much as make it simpler to parse, question, and observe logs. The brand new Logcat UI has been out there to attempt as an opt-in function in Dolphin, and it’s now enabled by default in Electrical Eel, together with quite a few quality-of-life and stability fixes. Some highlights embody higher formatting for logs, a wiser search area with autocomplete assist to filter for the logs you wish to see, capacity to persist log output throughout app restarts, and choices to customise what’s displayed.

Logcat New UI

App High quality Insights window: The brand new App High quality Insights instruments allow you to browse and examine crash information from Firebase Crashlytics instantly in Android Studio with out having to leap forwards and backwards between the IDE and a browser.

The IDE shows your prime points, which you’ll be able to filter to point out solely the latest crashes, or crashes from a particular model of your app. For every concern, you possibly can see the variety of affected customers and the stack hint, which lets you shortly navigate to the place in your code the place the crash occurred. Furthermore, you’ll see gutter icons in your supply recordsdata, which point out components of your code that present up in your app’s prime crash studies. Merely click on on the hyperlink to navigate from the code to the crash report within the App High quality Insights window. To get began, learn the official documentation.

Moving image of Screenshot showing App Quality Insights window

App High quality Insights window

Emulators & gadgets

New “Desktop” class & Desktop AVD: In Electrical Eel, you now have the choice to create a Desktop emulator. This allows you to check how your app behaves on gadgets akin to Chromebooks. There are a handful of interactions which might be totally different on these gadgets that you need to check along with your app. For instance, apps could be freeform resized or minimized, which your app ought to deal with gracefully.

Testing apps on new Desktop AVDs

Resizable Emulator (Experimental): The Resizable emulator helps you check your app on totally different display sizes with out having to run a number of emulators. After creating and launching a resizable emulator, you should use the Show Mode menu to change between totally different reference gadget sizes and see how your app behaves.

Moving image of using the Resizable Emulator

Utilizing the Resizable Emulator

Bodily Gadgets Mirroring (Experimental, Decide-in): Now you can mirror your bodily gadget to Android Studio and work together with it equally to the way you’d use an emulator. That is an opt-in function in Electrical Eel so as to share suggestions with us. With a view to use it, you might want to first go to Desire > Experimental > System Mirroring to allow it. Then, join your bodily gadget by way of ADB (both by way of wired or wi-fi), and it’ll present up within the Operating Gadgets panel. As soon as mirrored, you possibly can work together with it very similar to you’re used to with emulators, akin to multi-touch, bodily buttons, and gadget rotation. Mouse and keyboard occasions are forwarded, and you should use the controls on the toolbar to enter button presses, or to rotate the gadget.

You may also drag and drop recordsdata onto the mirrored gadget (similar to on an emulator). If the file is an APK, it will likely be put in, which could be actually helpful for shortly testing a construct. For different file varieties, the file can be copied to the gadget’s Obtain folder.

Moving image of physical devices mirroring in Android Studio

Moving image of physical devices mirroring on Physical Device

Bodily Gadgets Mirroring (Android Studio and Bodily Deice)

IntelliJ

IntelliJ Platform Replace – Android Studio Electrical Eel (2022.1.1) consists of the IntelliJ 2022.1 platform launch, which has many new options akin to Dependency Analyzer to facilitate dependency administration and battle decision and the Notifications device window that gives a brand new, streamlined technique to obtain notifications from the IDE. It additionally consists of quite a few different notable enhancements which might be lined right here.

To recap, Android Studio Electrical Eel (2022.1.1) consists of these new enhancements & options: