Posted by Juan Sebastian Oviedo, Senior Product Manager
Today at Google I / O 2022, we announced an exciting set of new features available in Android Studio Dolphin Beta and Electric Eel Canary, both available for download. You told us you want to be more productive while creating Android apps, so we’ve focused on improvements that make the development experience faster and more informative.
in the Android Studio Dolphin release you will find the following features and enhancements that you can start using in the Beta channel, which is close to stable quality:
- View Compose animations and coordinate them with Animation Preview.
- Define annotation classes to easily include and apply multiple Compose preview definitions at once.
- Track reconstitution counts for your compilation items in the Layout Inspector.
- Easily connect and control Wear OS emulators and launch tiles, watches and complications directly from Android Studio.
- Diagnose application issues faster with Logcat V2.
For even more latest features, you can take a taste of the Android Studio Electric Eel release in the Canary Channel:
- View dependency insights from the new Google Play SDK Index, a public portal with information about popular dependencies / SDKs. If a specific version of a library is marked “outdated” by its author, a corresponding Ribbon alert will appear when looking at that dependency definition. It allows you to discover and update dependency issues during development instead of later when you go to publish your app on the Play Console. You can learn more about this new tool here.
- View Firebase Crashlytics reports directly in Android Studio using the new App Quality Insights window. The App Quality Insights window allows you to navigate from stack tracks to your code with a few simple clicks. The IDE also highlights rules code in the editor while editing files that contain recent crashes. It saves you time by presenting executable crash information to users directly in the IDE, allowing you to focus on providing your users with the best programming experience.
- Test your app’s UI on representative reference devices using a single Android emulator. Instead of setting up emulators specifically for tablets, phones or computers, you can use a single emulator that can be modified and its configuration changed without redeploying to test your application.
- With the experimental live edit feature, make code changes and have them instantly reflected in the Compose Preview and running application on an emulator or physical device.
These features will be promoted to more stable channels once we have your feedback and make improvements, so please give it a try.
Check out the What’s New in Android Developer Utility session to see all the new features in action.
Below is a list of key new features and enhancements in Android Studio Dolphin:
Jetpack Compose
- Compose animation coordination – See all your animations at once and coordinate them in Animation Preview. You can also freeze a specific animation.
Compose animation coordination
- Compile Multi-Preview Notes – Define a annotation class that includes multiple preview definitions and use that new annotation to generate those previews simultaneously. Use this new note to preview multiple devices, fonts, and themes at once – without repeating those definitions for each compiler.
Multiple preview notes
- Set reconstitution scores in layout inspector – View reconstitution scores for a Compose application in Layout Inspector. Reconstitution counts and skip counts can optionally be displayed in the component tree and attributes panels. Learn more.
Compile reconstitution counts
Drag OS
- Dra OS Emulator Pairing Assistant – Using the Wear OS Emulator Pairing Assistant, you can now view Wear Devices in the Device Manager, and connect multiple clock emulators with a single phone. You also do not have to reset devices as often, because Android Studio remembers pairings after shutting down.
Drag OS Emulator Pairing Assistant
- Wear OS Emulator Side Toolbar – Use Wear-specific emulator buttons that resemble and simulate physical buttons, including main buttons, palm buttons, and tilt buttons.
Drag OS Emulator Side Toolbar
- Wear OS Direct Surface Launch – Create Run / Debug configurations for Wear OS tiles, clocks, and complications, and launch them directly from Android Studio.
New Wear OS Run / Debug Configuration Types
Development tools
- Logcat V2 – The new Logcat has been rebuilt from the ground up, making it easier to analyze, query and track logs. Logcat V2 includes new formatting that makes it easier to scan useful information, new split views so you can track more at a glance, and a brand new powerful syntax for filtering logs. Learn more.
Logcat V2
- Gradle-controlled devices – Describe the virtual devices you need for your automated tests as part of your build, and let Gradle take care of the rest. From SDK download, to device provisioning and setup, to test execution and disassembly, Gradle manages the lifecycle of your virtual devices during instrumentation tests. Gradle is also capable of applying intelligent functionality such as snapshot management, test case and test splintering to ensure that your tests run efficiently, quickly and consistently. Gradle Managed Devices is also introducing a brand new type of device called the Automatic test device, which optimizes devices for automated testing, resulting in a significant reduction in CPU and memory usage during test execution. Learn more.
Gradle-controlled devices
Below is a list of key new features and enhancements in Android Studio Electric Eel:
Jetpack Compose
- Direct edit- Make code changes to Composables in Android Studio and see those changes instantly reflected in the Compose Preview and your emulator or physical device. Live Edit is a sign-in feature that you can enable in Android Studio settings. Learn more.
Live emulator modification
Live preview edit
Google Play and Firebase
- SDK Insights – Get Ribbon Alerts for SDKs / Libraries Marked Outdated by Their Authors in the Google Play SDK Index. Update obsolete dependency versions during development to avoid issues when submitting your program to the Play Console.
Google Play SDK Index Insights
- Program Quality Insights from Firebase Crashlytics – Discover, investigate, and resolve issues reported by Crashlytics in Android Studio and within the context of your local source code. This integration helps reduce friction when navigating from crash to code (and from code to crash), and brings important contextual data about each crash to help you reproduce issues locally.
Program Quality Insights from Firebase Crashlytics
big screens
- Variable emulator – Switch quickly between representative reference devices to quickly test different application layout modes with a single running emulator instance. You can create these emulators by selecting the “Resize” type in the Device Manager’s “Create Device” flow.
Variable emulator
- Visual fluff – Discover and resolve your layout issues across different devices (for example, when a button is hidden out of bounds on a larger tablet) by opening the Layout Confirmation panel. We automatically run your layout to look for Visual Ribbon issues across different screen sizes.
Visual Ribbon
Development tools
- Emulated Bluetooth You can now discover and pair two phone emulators using Bluetooth virtual. This feature is available on Android Emulator 31.3.8 and higher with system image T (API 33). We plan to add more support for creating virtual peripherals, such as beacons and heart rate monitors, and integration testing for your Bluetooth features!
Pair two Android emulators using emulated Bluetooth
- Device mirror- Reduce the number of interruptions during development by streaming your device screen directly to Android Studio. Device Mirroring gives you the ability to communicate with a physical device through the running devices window in Studio. To enable this feature, go to Preferences> Experimental and choose Device mirror. Once enabled, plug in your device and open the Running Devices window to start streaming your screen.
Device mirror
To sum up, these new features and enhancements are available in the Android Studio Dolphin Beta, almost stable quality:
Jetpack Compose
- Compose animation coordination
- Compile Multi-Preview Notes
- Compile reconstitution scores in layout inspector
Drag OS
- Drag OS Emulator Pairing Assistant
- Drag OS Emulator Side Toolbar
- Draw OS Direct Surface Launch
Development tools
- Logcat V2
- Gradle-controlled devices
These brand new features and enhancements are available in the Android Studio Electric Eel Canary:
Jetpack Compose
Google Play and Firebase
- SDK Insights
- Program Quality Insights from Firebase Crashlytics
big screens
- Variable emulator
- Visual Ribbon
Development tools
- imitate bluetooth
- Device mirror
getting started
Android Studio Dolphin Beta and Electric Eel Canary are both available for download. You can install them side by side with the current stable version of Android Studio by following these instructions. The Beta release is almost stable release quality, but bugs may still exist, so if you find an issue, please let us know so we can work to fix it. Similarly, if you find a problem or have feedback for the features in the Canary version, please let us know.
We truly appreciate your feedback on issues and feature requests. You can follow us – the Android Studio development team Twitter and on Medium.
See the preview release notes for more details.