Support Library Setup

Note: With the release of Android 9.0 (API level 28) there is a new version of the support library called AndroidX which is part of Jetpack. The AndroidX library contains the existing support library and also includes the latest Jetpack components.

You can continue to use the support library. Historical artifacts (those versioned 27 and earlier, and packaged as android.support.*) will remain available on Google Maven. However, all new library development will occur in the AndroidX library.

We recommend using the AndroidX libraries in all new projects. You should also consider migrating existing projects to AndroidX as well.

How you setup the Android Support Libraries in your development project depends on what features you want to use and what range of Android platform versions you want to support with your application.

This document guides you through downloading the Support Library package and adding libraries to your development environment.

The support libraries are now available through Google's Maven repository. We no longer support downloading the libraries through the SDK Manager, and that functionality will be removed soon..

Choosing Support Libraries

Before adding a Support Library to your application, decide what features you want to include and the lowest Android versions you want to support. For more information on the features provided by the different libraries, see Support Library Features.

Adding Support Libraries

In order to use a Support Library, you must modify your application's project's classpath dependencies within your development environment. You must perform this procedure for each Support Library you want to use.

To add a Support Library to your application project:

1. Include Google's Maven repository in your project's build.gradle file.

   allprojects {
       repositories {
           google()
   
           // If you're using a version of Gradle lower than 4.1, you must
           // instead use:
           //
           // maven {
           //     url 'https://maven.google.com'
           // }
       }
   }
   

2. For each module in which you want to use a Support Library, add the library in the dependencies block of the module's build.gradle file. For example, to add the v4 core-utils library, add the following:

   dependencies {
       ...
       implementation "com.android.support:support-core-utils:28.0.0"
   }
   

Caution: Using dynamic dependencies (for example, palette-v7:23.0.+) can cause unexpected version updates and regression incompatibilities. We recommend that you explicitly specify a library version (for example, palette-v7:28.0.0).

Using Support Library APIs

Support Library classes that provide support for existing framework APIs typically have the same name as framework class but are located in the android.support class packages, or have a *Compat suffix.

Note: After including the Support Library in your application project, we strongly recommend that you shrink, obfuscate, and optimize your app for release. In addition to protecting your source code with obfuscation, shrinking removes unused classes from any libraries you include in your application, which keeps the download size of your application as small as possible.

Further guidance for using some Support Library features is provided in the Android developer training classes, guides and samples. For more information about the individual Support Library classes and methods, see the android.support packages in the API reference.

Manifest Declaration Changes

If you are increasing the backward compatibility of your existing application to an earlier version of the Android API with the Support Library, make sure to update your application's manifest. Specifically, you should update the android:minSdkVersion element of the <uses-sdk> tag in the manifest to the new, lower version number, as shown below:

  <uses-sdk
      android:minSdkVersion="14"
      android:targetSdkVersion="23" />

The manifest setting tells Google Play that your application can be installed on devices with Android 4.0 (API level 14) and higher.

If you are using Gradle build files, the minSdkVersion setting in the build file overrides the manifest settings.

apply plugin: 'com.android.application'

android {
    ...

    defaultConfig {
        minSdkVersion 16
        ...
    }
    ...
}

In this case, the build file setting tells Google Play that the default build variant of your application can be installed on devices with Android 4.1 (API level 16) and higher. For more information about build variants, see Build System Overview.

Note: If you are including several support libraries, the minimum SDK version must be the highest version required by any of the specified libraries. For example, if your app includes both the v14 Preference Support library and the v17 Leanback library, your minimum SDK version must be 17 or higher.