Each Android Studio release goes through the following stages of development:
- Canary - Leading edge features under active development, lightly tested. While you can use Canary builds for development, be aware that features might be added or changed.
- Release Candidate (RC) - The next version of Android Studio that's almost ready for stable release. The feature set for the next version has been stabilized.
- Stable - The final version of Android Studio.
- Patch n - Updates to a version of Android Studio, typically for bug fixes. Might contain new minor features.
There are two types of Android Studio releases:
Merge - Contains the latest updates from the corresponding IntelliJ version. Merge releases might contain limited new Android-Studio-specific features, minor improvements, and bug fixes.
Merge releases are named
<animal> <IDEA year.major>.1 [stage]For example,
Meerkat 2024.3.1 RC 2.Feature Drop - Contains new Android Studio features and bug fixes.
Feature drops are named
<animal> Feature Drop <IDEA year.major>.2 [stage]For example,
Ladybug Feature Drop 2024.2.2 Patch 2.
These release names include:
<animal>- the code name for the Android Studio release. These names alphabetically indicate which releases are newer.<IDEA year.major>- which version of IntelliJ IDEA is the base for this release of Android Studio[stage]- (optional) indicates patches and pre-release versions. If omitted, this a stable, non-patched release of Android Studio.
For more information on the Android Studio release strategy, See More frequent, focused updates for Android Studio.