New features in Android Studio Preview

Android Studio 4.1 has been released to the stable channel. Download it here.

Android Studio 4.2 is currently in the Beta channels.

Android Studio Arctic Fox | 2020.3.1 is currently in the Canary and Dev channels.

For the latest news on releases, including a list of notable fixes in each release, also see the Release updates.

If you encounter any problems using a preview version of Android Studio, please let us know. Your bug reports help to make Android Studio better.

Android Studio Arctic Fox | 2020.3.1

Updated version numbering for Android Studio

We have changed the version numbering system for Android Studio to more closely align with IntelliJ IDEA, the IDE upon which Android Studio is built.

In the previous numbering system, this would have been Android Studio 4.3 or version 4.3.0.1. With the new numbering system, it is now Android Studio - Arctic Fox | 2020.3.1 Canary 1, or version 2020.3.1.1.

Going forward, here’s how the Android Studio version number is determined:

<Year of IntelliJ Version>.<IntelliJ major version>.<Studio major version>.<Studio minor/patch version>

• The first two number groups represent the version of the IntellIj platform that a particular Android Studio release is based on. For this release, that's version 2020.3.
• The third number group represents the Studio major version, starting at 1 and incrementing by one for every major release.
• The fourth number group represents the Studio minor/patch version, starting at 1 and incrementing by one for every minor release.
• We are also giving each major release a version name, incrementing from A to Z based on animal names. This release is named Arctic Fox.

Updated version numbering for Android Gradle plugin

We are updating the version numbering for Android Gradle plugin (AGP) to more closely match the underlying Gradle build tool. Therefore, AGP 7.0 will be the next release after AGP 4.2.

For more details, see Versioning changes in the AGP release notes.

StateFlow support in data binding

For Kotlin apps that use coroutines, you can now use StateFlow objects as a data binding source to automatically notify the UI about changes in the data. Your data bindings will be lifecycle aware and will only be triggered when the UI is visible on the screen.

To use a StateFlow object with your binding class, you need to specify a lifecycle owner to define the scope of the StateFlow object, and in your layout, assign the properties and methods of your ViewModel component to the corresponding views using binding expressions, as shown in the following example:

class ViewModel() {
   val username: StateFlow<String>
}

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/name"
    android:text="@{viewmodel.username}" />

If you're in a Kotlin app that uses AndroidX, StateFlow support is automatically included in the functionality of data binding, including the coroutines dependencies.

To learn more, see Work with observable data objects.

New WorkManager Inspector

In a previous version of Android Studio, we introduced the Database Inspector to help developers understand and debug their app’s SQLite databases. The Database Inspector is built on an App Inspection framework that was designed to support different types of inspectors, for different aspects of your app.

In Arctic Fox Canary 3 and higher, you can use the new WorkManager Inspector, which helps you visualize, monitor, and debug your app's background workers when using WorkManager library 2.5.0-beta02 or higher.

You can now find both the WorkManager Inspector and the Database Inspector by selecting View > Tool Windows > App Inspection from the menu bar. When you deploy an app using WorkManager 2.5.0-beta02 or higher on a device running API level 26 and higher, you should see active workers in the WorkManager Inspector tab, as shown below.

You can then select a worker from the table to see more detailed information, such as a description of the worker, how it was executed, details of its worker chain, and the result of the execution of the worker.

To help you investigate issues from workers that fail execution, you can stop a currently running or enqueued worker by selecting it from the table and clicking Cancel Selected Worker from the toolbar. You can also filter workers in the table by tags you’ve assigned to them using the All tags dropdown menu.

If you want to see a visual representation of a worker chain, select a worker from the table and click Show Graph View from the toolbar. You can then select any worker in the chain to see its details, or stop it if it’s currently enqueued or running. To return to the table, click Show List View .

Android Studio now uses Gradle test runner

To improve overall consistency of test executions, Android Studio now uses Gradle to run all unit tests by default. In many cases, this change will not affect your testing workflow in the IDE.

For example, when you click the Run command in the context menu (visible when you right-click on a test class) or its corresponding gutter action , Android Studio will use the Gradle run configuration by default to run unit tests.

However, Android Studio no longer recognizes existing Android JUnit run configurations, so you should migrate Android JUnit run configurations that you might save as project files to Gradle run configurations.

To create a Gradle test configuration, select the Gradle template when following the instructions in Create a new run/debug configuration. When you've created a new configuration, it will appear in the Edit Configurations dialog in the Gradle section:

If you want to inspect Android JUnit configurations that are no longer recognized, you can do one of two things:

• Open manually saved configurations in a text editor. The locations of these files are specified by the user, but the files typically appear in <my-app>/.idea/runConfigurations/.

• Look for temporary configurations in <my-app>/.idea/workspace.xml and look under the <component name="RunManager" ...> node. For example:

  <component name="RunManager" selected="Gradle.PlantTest">
  …
  <configuration name="PlantTest" type="AndroidJUnit" factoryName="Android JUnit" nameIsGenerated="true">
        <module name="Sunflower.app" />
        <useClassPathOnly />
        <extension name="coverage">
          <pattern>
            <option name="PATTERN" value="com.google.samples.apps.sunflower.data.*" />
            <option name="ENABLED" value="true" />
          </pattern>
        </extension>
        <option name="PACKAGE_NAME" value="com.google.samples.apps.sunflower.data" />
        <option name="MAIN_CLASS_NAME" value="com.google.samples.apps.sunflower.data.PlantTest" />
        <option name="METHOD_NAME" value="" />
        <option name="TEST_OBJECT" value="class" />
        <option name="PARAMETERS" value="" />
        <option name="WORKING_DIRECTORY" value="$MODULE_DIR$" />
        <method v="2">
          <option name="Android.Gradle.BeforeRunTask" enabled="true" />
        </method>
      </configuration>
  

Android Gradle plugin 7.0

Android Gradle plugin build cache removed

The AGP build cache was removed in AGP 4.1. Previously introduced in AGP 2.3 to complement the Gradle build cache, the AGP build cache was superseded entirely by the Gradle build cache in AGP 4.1. This change does not impact build time.

In AGP 7.0, the android.enableBuildCache and android.buildCacheDir properties and the cleanBuildCache task have been removed.

Use Java 11 source code in your project

You can now compile up to Java 11 source code in your app’s project, enabling you to use newer language features like private interface methods, the diamond operator for anonymous classes, and local variable syntax for lambda parameters.

To enable this feature, set compileOptions to the desired Java version and set compileSdkVersion to 30 or above:

// build.gradle.kts

android {
    compileSdkVersion(30)

    compileOptions {
      sourceCompatibility(JavaVersion.VERSION_11)
      targetCompatibility(JavaVersion.VERSION_11)
    }

    kotlinOptions {
      jvmTarget = "11"
    }
}

// build.gradle

android {
    compileSdkVersion 30

    compileOptions {
      sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_11
      targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_11
    }

    // For Kotlin projects
    kotlinOptions {
      jvmTarget = "11"
    }
}

Dependency configurations removed

In AGP 7.0 Canary 3, the following configurations (or dependency scopes) have been removed:

• compile
  Depending on use case, this has been replaced by api or implementation.
  Also applies to *Compile variants, for example: debugCompile.
• provided
  This has been replaced by compileOnly.
  Also applies to *Provided variants, for example: releaseProvided.
• apk
  This has been replaced by runtimeOnly.
• publish
  This has been replaced by runtimeOnly.

In most cases, the AGP Upgrade Assistant will automatically migrate your project to the new configurations.

Classpath change when compiling against Android Gradle plugin

If you are compiling against the Android Gradle plugin, your compile classpath may change. Because Android Gradle plugin now uses api/implementation configurations internally, some artifacts may be removed from your compile classpath. If you depend on an Android Gradle plugin dependency at compile-time, be sure to add it as an explicit dependency.

Accessibility Scanner for Layout Editor

Android Studio now integrates with the Android Accessibility Test Framework to help you find accessibility issues in your layouts. When using the Layout Editor, click on the Accessibility Scanner button to launch the scanner. The tool also offers suggested fixes for some common problems such as missing content descriptions.

Accessibility Scanner is available starting in Canary 8.

Support for Jetpack Compose

Jetpack Compose toolkit provides a modern approach to building your app's UI. The toolkit also brings all of Kotlin's benefits, such as helping you to write concise and idiomatic code that's fully interoperable with Java.

For the best experience developing with Jetpack Compose, you should use the latest version of Android Studio 4.2. That's because when you use Android Studio to develop your app with Jetpack Compose, you can benefit from smart editor features, such as New Project templates and the ability to immediately preview your Compose UI.

To learn more and get started, go to the Jetpack Compose overview.

Jetpack Compose tooling support in Arctic Fox | 2020.3.1

Android Studio now includes additional support for previewing and testing apps that use Jetpack Compose.

Compose preview

The following parameters for @Preview methods are now available:

• showBackground: Switch on and off a background for your preview.
• backgroundColor: Set a color that is only used in the preview surface.
• uiMode: This new parameter can take any of the Configuration.UI_* constants and allows you to change the behavior of the preview to, for example, set it to Night Mode to see how the theme reacts.

Interactive preview

In this mode, you can interact with your UI components, click them, and see how the state changes. It's a quick way to get feedback on how your UI reacts and to preview the animations. To enable it, just click the interactive icon and the preview will switch modes.

To stop, click the Stop Interactive Preview in the top toolbar.

Deploy to device

Use this feature to deploy a snippet of your UI to a device. This will help to test small parts of your code in the device without having to start the full application.

Click the deploy to device icon next to the @Preview annotation or in the top of the preview and Android Studio will deploy that @Preview to your connected device or emulator.

Preview Data Sources API

The new Data Sources API allows you to generate previews from your data. If you have an existing list of data, or a list of themes, this API will allow you to inject it as a parameter to the @Preview method.

class HelloWorldProvider :
   CollectionPreviewParameterProvider<String>(
       listOf("Hello World", "Привет мир", "Olá Mundo", "Hola Mundo"))

@Preview
@Composable
fun HelloWorldPreview(
   @PreviewParameter(HelloWorldProvider::class) text: String
) {
   MaterialTheme {
       Text(text = text)
   }
}

To enable the above features, your module's build.gradle must contain the following settings:

  android {
  …
  buildFeatures {
    compose true
  }
  composeOptions {
     kotlinCompilerExtensionVersion = "0.1.0-dev13"
     kotlinCompilerVersion = "1.3.70-dev-withExperimentalGoogleExtensions-20200424"
   }
}

Known issues for Compose preview

androidx.ui.foundation.Dialog is currently not supported in Compose preview.

Known Issues for Arctic Fox Preview

Update patches not working for Canary 2

On Linux and macOS machines, update patches are not working for Canary 2. To upgrade to the Canary 2 release, download and install the full version.

Android Studio 4.2

Configure app signing per variant

It is now possible to enable or disable app signing in Android Gradle plugin per variant.

This example demonstrates how to set app signing per variant using the onVariants() method in either Kotlin or Groovy:

androidComponents {
    onVariants(selector().withName("fooDebug"), {
        signingConfig.enableV1Signing.set(false)
        signingConfig.enableV2Signing.set(true)
    })

Optimizing Gradle builds for JDK 11

When running in Android Studio, the Gradle build tool uses the default JDK version set in Android Studio. In previous releases, JDK 8 was used by default; in 4.2, however, JDK 11 is now the default JDK. This update to JDK 11 impacts the default configuration of the JVM garbage collector, since JDK 8 uses the parallel garbage collector while JDK 11 uses the G1 garbage collector.

To potentially improve build performance, we recommend testing your Gradle builds with the parallel garbage collector. In gradle.properties set the following:

org.gradle.jvmargs=-XX:+UseParallelGC

If there are other options already set in this field, add a new option:

org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xmx1536m -XX:+UseParallelGC

To measure build speed with different configurations, see Profile your build.

System Trace: Improved metrics for memory and graphics

In the CPU profiler, the System Trace feature now includes new metrics for analyzing app performance.

Events Table

The Events table is a new tab on the right-hand side of the Analysis pane. This table lists all trace events in the currently selected thread.

New tracks and track groups

More data is now available in System Trace for traces of apps deployed to devices running Android 9 or higher.

BufferQueue (in the Display section)

This new track shows the buffer count of the app's surface BufferQueue (0, 1 or 2). It can help you understand the state of image buffers as they move between the Android graphics components. For example, a value of 2 means the app is currently triple-buffered, which may result in extra input latency.

CPU Frequency (in the CPU cores section)

In addition to CPU scheduling data, we also included CPU frequency by core. This shows how hard each core is working and may give you an idea of which ones are the "big" or "little" cores in modern mobile processors.

Process Memory (RSS)

The new Process Memory (RSS) shows the amount of physical memory currently in use by the app.

Total

This is the total amount of physical memory currently in use by your process. On Unix-based systems, this is known as the "Resident Set Size", and is the combination of all the memory used by anonymous allocations (those backed by the swap file), file mappings (files which are loaded into memory a page at a time), and shared memory allocations (accessed by multiple processes, and allocated by a variety of mechanisms).

For Windows developers, Resident Set Size is analogous to the Working Set Size.

Allocated

This counter tracks how much physical memory is currently used by the process’s normal memory allocations. These are allocations which are both anonymous (not backed by a specific file) and private (not shared).

File Mappings

This counter tracks how much physical memory is being used by any file mappings owned by the process.

Shared

This counter tracks how much physical memory is being used to share memory between this process and other processes in the system.

R8 retrace now available in command-line tools

Available in version 4.0 of the command-line tools, R8 retrace is a standalone tool for obtaining the original stack trace from an obfuscated stack trace.

You can download this package with the SDK manager, which installs R8 retrace in android_sdk/cmdline-tools. Alternatively, you can download the standalone command-line tools package.

For usage information, see R8 retrace in the user guide.

New Layout Inspector refresh action

Introduced in Android Studio 4.0, the Layout Inspector was designed for real-time inspection of your running app’s UI stack. However, you might not always want the Layout Inspector to immediately reflect what’s happening in your app, since you might want to inspect a snapshot of your app’s layout at a specific point in time or minimize the performance impact of live updates on your app.

Pause live updates and refresh the screen capture in the Layout Inspector.

To manually load a snapshot of UI data from your app, first disable the Live updates option. You can then click the Refresh button to take a new snapshot of the UI stack for inspection. The Layout Inspector now remembers your preference to keep Live updates enabled or disabled between sessions.

Android Gradle plugin support for Jetpack Compose

Starting with Android Gradle Plugin 4.2 Canary 13, only Jetpack Compose Compiler 1.0.0-alpha-04 and higher will be supported.

Upgrade Assistant for AGP

Starting in Android Studio 4.2 Canary 5, an Upgrade Assistant for Android Gradle plugin can help you update the AGP version for your project.

Built on top of the existing AGP upgrade functionality, this tool guides you through project-wide updates/refactorings and includes a preview of the updates to help prevent potential breaking changes before executing the AGP upgrade.

Support for Safe Args

Safe Args is a Gradle plugin that generates simple object and builder classes for type-safe navigation and access to any associated arguments. Android Studio 4.2 Canary 9 and higher includes special support when working with Safe Args, as described below:

• Autocompletions for Directions, Args, and the various builder classes
• Support for both Java and Kotlin safe args plugins
• Navigation from source to XML

Database Inspector

Query editor improvements

The Database Inspector includes some improvements to help you write and execute your custom SQL statements. When you open the inspector and open a New query tab, you should notice a larger, resizable editor surface to author and format your queries, as shown below.

Additionally, we now provide a history of your previous queries. When you click on the Show query history button, you should see a list of queries you previously ran against the currently selected database. Click a query in the list to see a preview of the full query in the editor and press Enter to copy it to the editor. Then, click Run to execute the statement.

Offline mode

In previous versions of Android Studio, disconnecting from an app process while using the Database Inspector resulted in closing the inspector and its data. In Android Studio 4.2 Canary 8 and higher, we've added the ability to keep inspecting your app's databases after a process disconnects, making it easier to debug your app after a crash.

When a disconnect occurs, the Database Inspector downloads your databases and then makes them available to you in offline mode. When offline, you can open tables and run queries.

Keep in mind, when you reconnect to a live app process, the Database Inspector returns to live mode and shows you only the data that is on the device. That is, data shown in offline mode doesn't persist when you reconnect to an app process. Because of this, the Database Inspector does not allow editing or running modification statements while in offline mode.

New removable setting for feature modules

Android Gradle plugin 4.2 uses bundletool 1.0.0, which introduces a behavior change for apps using feature modules: Any feature module specified as dist:install-time that's not explicitly marked as dist:removable will become non-removable by default. This new setting optimizes fusing of install-time modules with the base module, potentially improving app performance for some apps.

For more information on this new setting, see the documentation for the dist:removable tag in the documentation for feature module manifest.

This section provides a summary of the new features and changes in Android Studio 4.2.

Android Gradle plugin 4.2

Behavior change for gradle.properties files

Starting in AGP 4.2, it is no longer possible to override Gradle properties from subprojects. In other words, if you declare a property in a gradle.properties file in a subproject instead of the root project, it will be ignored.

As an example, in previous releases, AGP would read values from projectDir/gradle.properties, projectDir/app/gradle.properties, projectDir/library/gradle.properties, etc. For app modules, if the same Gradle property was present in both projectDir/gradle.properties and projectDir/app/gradle.properties, the value from projectDir/app/gradle.properties would take precedence.

In AGP 4.2, this behavior has been changed, and AGP won't load values from gradle.properties in subprojects (e.g., projectDir/app/gradle.properties). This change reflects the new Gradle behavior and supports configuration caching.

For more information on setting values in gradle.properties files, see the Gradle docs.

Java language version 8 by default

Starting in version 4.2, AGP will use the Java 8 language level by default. Java 8 provides access to a number of newer language features including lambda expressions, method references, and static interface methods. For the full list of supported features see the Java 8 documentation.

To keep the old behavior, specify Java 7 explicitly in your module-level build.gradle.kts or build.gradle file:

// build.gradle.kts

android {
  ...
  compileOptions {
    sourceCompatibility = JavaVersion.VERSION_1_7
    targetCompatibility = JavaVersion.VERSION_1_7
  }
  // For Kotlin projects, compile to Java 6 instead of 7
  kotlinOptions {
    jvmTarget = "1.6"
  }
}

// build.gradle

android {
  ...
  compileOptions {
    sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_7
    targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_7
  }
  // For Kotlin projects, compile to Java 6 instead of 7
  kotlinOptions {
    jvmTarget = "1.6"
  }
}

New JVM resource compiler

A new JVM resource compiler in Android Gradle plugin 4.2 tool replaces portions of the AAPT2 resource compiler, potentially improving build performance, especially on Windows machines.

Starting with the Canary 7 release, the new JVM resource compiler is enabled by default.

v3 and v4 signing now supported

Android Gradle Plugin 4.2 now supports APK v3 and APK v4 signing formats. To enable one or both of these formats in your build, add the following properties to your module-level build.gradle or build.gradle.kts file:

// build.gradle.kts

android {
   ...
   signingConfigs {
      config {
          ...
          enableV3Signing(true)
          enableV4Signing(true)
      }
   }
}

// build.gradle

android {
  ...
  signingConfigs {
    config {
        ...
        enableV3Signing true
        enableV4Signing true
    }
  }
}

APK v4 signing allows you to quickly deploy large APKs using the ADB Incremental APK installation in Android 11. This new flag takes care of the APK signing step in the deployment process.

Improved instrumentation testing

Starting in Android Studio 4.2 Canary 1, instrumentation tests can now be run across multiple devices in parallel and investigated using a specialized instrumentation test results panel. Using this panel, you can determine if tests are failing due to API level or hardware properties.

Testing your app across a wide variety of API levels and form factors is one of the best ways to ensure that all users have a great experience when using your app.

To take advantage of this feature:

1. Select Modify Device Set in the target device dropdown menu (in the top-center of the IDE).

   

2. Select the target devices and click OK.

   

3. Select Multiple Devices in the target device dropdown menu and run your tests.

   

To view your test results in the Run panel, go to View > Tool Windows > Run.

The new test results panel allows you to filter your test results by status, device, and API level. Additionally, you can sort each column by clicking the header. By clicking on an individual test, you can view logs and device information individually for each device.

Apply Changes

To help you be more productive as you iterate on your app, we've made the following enhancements to Apply Changes for devices running Android 11 or higher:

Support for additional code changes

For devices running Android 11 or higher, you can now add static final primitive fields and then deploy those changes to your running app by clicking either Apply Code Changes or Apply Changes and Restart Activity .

You can now also add resources and then deploy those changes to your running app on Android 11 devices by clicking Apply Changes and Restart Activity .

ANDROID_SDK_HOME environment variable deprecated

The ANDROID_SDK_HOME environment variable is deprecated and has been replaced with ANDROID_PREFS_ROOT. For more information, see Emulator Environment Variables.

Known Issues for 4.2 Preview

This section describes current known issues in Android Studio 4.2 Preview.

Native Memory Profiler: Profiling app startup disabled

Profiling native memory on app startup has been disabled. This option will be enabled in an upcoming release.

As a workaround, you can use the Perfetto standalone command-line profiler to capture startup profiles.

Studio doesn’t start after installing Canary 8

After upgrading Android Studio to 4.2 Canary 8, the IDE may not start for certain users who set custom VM options in the .vmoptions file. To work around this issue, we recommend commenting out custom options in .vmoptions (using the “#” character). The .vmoptions file can be found in the following locations:

Windows

C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\[Local|Roaming]\Google\AndroidStudioPreview4.2\studio64.exe.vmoptions

macOS

~/Library/Application Support/Google/AndroidStudioPreview4.2/studio.vmoptions

Linux

~/.config/Google/AndroidStudioPreview4.2/studio64.vmoptions