What's new in Android Studio - Electric Eel

Introduction

Hi learners, in this article, we will review the mindblowing changes to the most loved platform of Android Developers, Android Studio. The most recent stable release of Android Studio is Android Studio Electric Eel | 2022.1.1.

Android Studio is the official Android development IDE, including everything you need to build Android apps. You can download or update it inside Android Studio by clicking Help > Check for updates (Android Studio > Check for updates on macOS or Windows). You can view the Past release notes for the older versions here at Past releases. You can also have early access to the upcoming versions of the android studio here at Preview builds of Android Studio.

Core features

Design

Compose Design Tool - There has been a series of updates on Compose to make UI development easier and faster. Jetpack Compose is Android’s recommended modern toolkit for building native UI. It simplifies and accelerates UI development on Android. Quickly bring your app to life with less code, powerful tools, and intuitive Kotlin APIs.

Develop

Intelligent Code Editor - Writing Code in IDE has a direct impact on the robustness and intelligence of the code editor. New Android Studio provides more completion for Kotlin, Java, and C/C++ language. You can see your code live reflected through live Edit on Jetpack Compose.

Build

Flexible Build System - New Gradle on the Android Studio system lets you build your application with customization. You can also customize your build with a build analyzer.

Test

Easily emulate any device- Now Android Emulator can be converted into a phone, unfolded device, and table easily by making it resizable. This functionality lets you test your app on different devices.

Publish

Android App Bundle - Optimize your Android app size before publishing the application by inspecting the contents like manifest, resources, and other files. Also, you can compare the changed size app versions.

 

Get started

1. Navigate Crashlytics data in Android Studio -

Now you can see Crashlytics data in Android Studio by going to Tools > Firebase and clicking Crashlytics. You just have to connect your project through firebase and you are good to go.  You can read more about the Firebase Assistant workflow in Firebase's getting started guide for Android.

2. Live updates to your Compose Preview -

Android Studio Electric Eel makes immediate updates to the preview of any changes made to the compose. This provides users from un-necessary running the build to see the changes in the preview. For more information, see Composable Preview.

3. Use Compose Preview with different devices

Starting from Android Studio Electric Eel, Now you can edit the device parameter of the Preview annotation to define configurations for your Composables in different devices. This enables the user to see the composable on different screen sizes and device configurations. 

4. Layout Inspector recomposition rendering highlights

Android Studio Electric Eel helps you to determine when and where in the UI composable are composing. The Tree Structure shows all the composable and you can easily see by expanding the tree in detail.

5. Visual linting for views

If your UI often gets spoiled when running on different screen devices (small or big) then this is a saver for you. With this tool, you can check layout render in multiple device sizes. If there is an issue, it will be there in the Problem panel.

To Use this Tool go to View -> Tool Windows -> Layout Validation. if this is not showing there then go to Settings and search for Layout validation then Add a keyboard shortcut.

6. Universal Problems panel

You can now view all the issues for your design tools in a shared issue panel. To view the tool window, navigate to View > Tool Windows > Problems.

7. Resizable emulator

To make a Resizable emulator to should have a minimum Android Emulator version of 31.1.3 or higher.

1. In the device manager click on create device flow and select Resizable(Experimental) phone hardware profile.
2. If you haven't downloaded the Android Tiramisu system image do download it and then select it.
3. Follow the prompt to create AVD.

Use the Display Mode dropdown in the emulator toolbar to quickly toggle between a set of common device types. The emulator screen resizes so you can easily test your app across a range of screen sizes and densities.

8. Device mirroring

Now you can mirror your device in Android Studio Electric Eel. It is available in Electric Eel Canary Channel as an experimental feature. To turn it on manually go to File > Settings > Experimental and check the box next to Device Mirroring.

9. Desktop Android Virtual Device now available

Now you can test your app on desktop devices such as Chromebooks by using Desktop AVD. Users often interact with the app differently on large-screen devices, and the Desktop AVD enables you to see how your app runs in the environment.

Some functions to test your app

1. App resizing
2. minimize, maximize, and restore the app to see app behavior
3. App notifications 

10. Check download impact using Build Analyzer

Now the Build Analyzer provides all the data of time spent on downloading the dependencies and the details about the file. This information is useful to identify the configurations issue found in dependencies that cause unexpected downloads.

11. SDK insights

SDK providers now can register their SDK at the Google play SDK console. With this, they can see their statistics and crash reporting. You can also use it to find popular commercial SDKs to make decisions about their business and usage.

12. Updates to Logcat

Android Studio Eel has enabled the new version of Logcat by default. It makes it easier to track, parse, and query any logs in the application. This was the major update to the tool since its development. visit  View logs with Logcat for more details and how to use the new functionality.

Summary 

We have covered almost every new update available till the date of article writing. This update was a revolution for the development journey of Android Studio. You can comment for any suggestions and mistakes in this article.

Thank you, Happy learning...