Android Studio 4.0 Released, with numerous feature enhancements

Editorial Staff

May 28, Google released “Android Studio 4.0”, an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Android application development. It introduces new features like Motion Layout API editor.

Based on JetBrains IDE “IntelliJ IDEA”, Android Studio is an Integrated Development Environment for Android application development. It provides development functionalities like code editor with auto code completion feature for Kotlin, Java, and C/C++, Gradle-based build system, and profile tools. It also includes APK Analyzer, which inspects the contents of any APK file, and emulator.

Android Studio 4.0 is the successor of version 3.0 released in 2017. This latest version uses IntelliJ IDEA 2019.3.3.

The new “Motion Editor” is an editor for MotionLayout API, which helps Android developers manage complex motions and widget animation. It is a powerful interface for creating, editing, and previewing MotionLayout animations.

Android Studio 4.0 has upgraded Layout Inspector. As it gives access to data that provides insights on how resources are being resolved, it allows intuitive debugging of the UI. With the new “Layout Validation”, it allows users to preview layouts on different screens and configurations simultaneously. It is useful when developing for multiple frame-factors, screen sizes, and resolutions.

CPU Profiler UI has been upgraded. CPU recordings are now separated from the main profiler timeline and organized in groups to allow easier analysis.  Now users can view all thread activity in the Thread Activity timeline, and use navigation shortcuts. Android Studio now includes Android-specific live templates for Kotlin code and has switched to clangd for C++ support.

Build’s Gradle plugin is upgraded to Android Gradle plugin 4.0.0. It includes “Build Analyzer”, which can detect steps that take the most time. In Android Studio 4.0, the “desugaring” engine has been extended to support Java language APIs.

Android Studio 4.0 now has built-in support for Kotlin DSL built script files.  This means that Kotlin build scripts now offer a full suite of quick fixes.

Android Studio 4.0 supports Windows, macOS, Linux, and Chrome OS. It is available on the project website.

Android Studio
https://developer.android.com/studio