Usually, a new version of Android Studio is released by Google I/O every year. Though this year has been the exception, the Android team is set to release Android Studio 4.0 today with new Android app design tools.
Android Studio 3.5 was released last year at Google I/O with limited new features, and the emphasis was entirely on stability and performance improvements under a project known as Project Marble. According to the announcement made on the Android Developer blog, Android Studio 4.0 has ample swath of new features which will give users an automatic shift to 4.x.
The most promising feature of this tool for the developers is to design their apps. The old version required manual editing of XML files whereas the new motion editor allows you to create complex motion layout animations just by a simple click and drag interface. The layout inspector and layout validation tools let the user preview their app’s design in 3 D or across multiple screens, respectively.
Developers will also enjoy a redesigned CPU profiler and the ability to use code completion in the code shrinking files. Click on the full release note for more details:
Design
- Motion Editor: a simple interface for creating, editing, and previewing MotionLayout animations
- Upgraded Layout Inspector: a real-time & more intuitive debugging experience
- Layout Validation: compare your UI across multiple screen dimensions
Develop & Profile
- CPU Profiler update: improvements to make the UI more intuitive to navigate and the data easier to understand
- R8 rules update: smart editor features for your code shrinker rules, such as syntax highlighting, completion, and error checking
- IntelliJ IDEA 2019.3 platform update with performance and quality improvements
- Live Template update: Android-specific live templates for your Kotlin code
· Clangd support: Clangd and Clang-Tidy turned on by default
Build
· Build Analyzer: understand and address bottlenecks in your build
· Java 8 language support update: APIs you can use regardless of your app’s minimum API level
· Feature-on-feature dependencies: define dependencies between Dynamic Feature modules
· build features DSL: enable or disable discrete build features, such as Data Binding
· Kotlin DSL: essential support for Kotlin DSL script files
As always, you can download Android Studio 4.0 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS directly from the Android Developers site, or you can simply update your existing installation from within the app.
