New Features in Android Studio Preview

The latest version available is Android Studio 3.0 and this page provides a summary of all the new features and changes. All these features are available in the latest canary release, and might not be available in the beta release channel yet.

For the latest news on releases, also see the Release Updates.

Core IDE changes

• We upgraded the base IDE from IntelliJ 2016.2 to 2017.1.2, which adds a number of new features in 2016.3 and 2017.1 -- including parameter hints, semantic highlighting, instant results in search, and much more.
• Many new lint checks.
• Instant Run debug issue 234401 should now be resolved. If a program is paused on breakpoint, app restarting is expected. But if the app is not paused on a breakpoint, it shouldn’t restart and hot swap should work when you only make a method implementation change.

Kotlin language

Android Studio 3.0 includes support for the Kotlin language. You can incorporate Kotlin into your project by converting a Java file to Kotlin (click Code > Convert Java File to Kotlin File) or by creating a new Kotlin-enabled project using the New Project wizard. Learn more about Kotlin and Android.

Support for Java 8 language features

Android Studio 3.0 introduces built-in support for Java 8 libraries and certain Java 8 language features. Jack is no longer required, and you should first disable Jack to use the improved Java 8 support built into the default toolchain. To learn more, read Use Java 8 language features.

New Android Profiler

The new Android Profiler in Android Studio 3.0 provides a realtime, unified view of your app's activity. The Android Profiler window replaces the Android Monitor window. To open the Android Profiler, follow these steps:

1. Click View > Tool Windows > Android Profiler (you can also click Android Profiler in the toolbar).
2. Select the device and app process you want to profile from the Android Profiler toolbar. If you've connected a device over USB but don't see it listed, ensure that you have enabled USB debugging.

Click on the NETWORK, CPU, or MEMORY timelines to open a more detailed view of each profiler.

For more information about each of the new profilers, see the following pages:

• Network Profiler
• CPU Profiler
• Memory Profiler

As part of this update, logcat has moved to a separate window.

Instant Apps support

Android Studio 3.0 allows you to create Instant Apps in your project using two new module types: Instant App modules and Feature modules.

Android Studio 3.0 also includes a new refactoring Modularize action and the App Links Assistant to help you implement Instant Apps. For more information about Instant Apps, see Android Instant Apps.

APK Debugger

The new APK Debugger in Android Studio 3.0 allows you to profile and debug APKs without having to build them from an Android Studio project, as long as they are debuggable. For more information about using the APK Debugger, read Profile and Debug Pre-built APKs.

New Device File Explorer

The new Device File Explorer tool window allows you to seamlessly interact with your connected device's filesystem.

You can click to view various files inside Android Studio and copy the files to your computer.

This feature replaces device filesystem interactions previously accomplished through DDMS.

Support for the Android O Developer Preview

Android Studio 3.0 adds support for Android O, including the following:

• A new Adaptive Icon wizard that allows you to create new adaptive launcher icon assets and preview how they will appear on different devices. To launch the Adaptive Icon wizard, right click on the /res folder in your project, then click New > Image Asset > Launcher Icons (Adaptive and Legacy). For more information about adaptive launcher icons in Android O, see Adaptive Icons.
• New XML fonts preview, font selection tools, and support for downloadable fonts. For more information about XML fonts and downloadable fonts in Android O, see Working With Fonts.

New templates for Android Things

Android Studio 3.0 includes a new set of templates in the New Project and New Module wizards, so you can start developing for Internet of Things devices with Android Things. For more information, see Android Things.

Layout Editor improvements

The Layout Editor in Android Studio 3.0 contains a number of new feature enhancements, including the following:

• Updated component tree with improved drag-and-drop view insertions
• New error panel
• New support for view Barriers and Groups
• Enhanced Chain creation

Layout Inspector improvements

The Layout Inspector in Android Studio 3.0 includes new enhancements to make it easier to debug issues with your app layouts, including grouping properties into common categories and new search functionality in both the View Tree and the Properties panels. To open the Layout Inspector, click Tools > Android > Layout Inspector.

Google's Maven repository

The Android Support Library Maven dependencies are now available outside of the Android SDK Manager in a new Maven repository. In combination with the command line sdkmanager tool and Gradle, this new distribution method simplifies Maven dependency management for those using continuous integration systems. To use the new Maven repository, add the URL to the repositories block of your build.gradle file as follows:

repositories {
  maven {
    url "https://maven.google.com"
  }
}

For more information, see Google Maven and offline repositories.

APK Analyzer improvements

Android Studio 3.0 includes the following improvements for the APK Analyzer:

• Shows fields in addition to the packages, classes, and methods that were previously available
• New filtering options at the top that show and hide fields and methods
• In the tree view, nodes that are shown in italics are references not defined in the DEX file
• For APKs built with Proguard enabled, you can load Proguard mapping files that add capabilities to the DEX viewer, including:
  • Bolded nodes to indicate that the nodes should not be removed when shrinking code
  • Enables a button that makes nodes that were removed during the shrinking process visible
  • Enables a button that restores the original names of nodes in the tree view that were obfuscated by Proguard

New Android Plugin for Gradle

Android plugin 3.0.0-alpha1 and higher aims to address build performance issues for Android projects with a large number of modules. When using the new plugin with these projects, you should experience the following:

• Faster configuration times due to delayed dependency resolution.
• Variant-aware dependency resolution only for the projects and variants you are building.
• Faster incremental build times when applying simple changes to code or resources.

In order to bring about these improvements, there are some breaking changes in the plugin behavior, DSL, and APIs. This impacts both build files and Gradle plugins. For instructions on how to migrate your own project to use this plugin, go to Migrate to the new plugin.

New Android Emulator features

The Android Emulator also includes a number of new features, including the following:

• New API Level 24 system images and Android O Beta system images that include the Google Play Store to facilitate end-to-end testing for your app and help you keep Google Play Services up to date for your AVDs.
• Support on Windows and Linux machines for OpenGL ES 3.0 on system images for API level 24 and higher and significant improvements for OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics performance on older emulator system images.

  Note: We currently make a best effort to automatically enable OpenGL ES 3.0 for all modern GPUs from Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD. If you experience problems running OpenGL ES 3.x apps, your system may not yet be automatically enabled. You can manually enable OpenGL ES 3.0 by adding the following line to your ~/.android/advancedFeatures.ini file:

  GLESDynamicVersion = true

• A new, easier way to generate a bug report for your app from the Android Emulator.
• A new link to quickly file an emulator-related bug for the Android team on the Android Issue Tracker (click Emulator Tool Bar > Extended Controls > Help > Emulator Help > File a Bug).
• A new UI to configure the proxy settings used by the Android Emulator. To configure proxy settings for the Android Emulator, click Extended Controls > Settings > Proxy.
• New support for rotary input for Android Wear devices on the emulator.

For more information about Android Emulator updates, see the Android Emulator Release Notes.