What's New in Android Studio 4.0 Features?
Android Studio 4.0 is packed with new features and powerful enhancements to existing ones, all of which have been developed based on feedback from the Android development community to help make your development more efficient than ever before, such as the new design editor, instant run, and so much more! If you're curious about what's new in Android Studio 4.0, keep reading!
First Look
Android Studio 4.0 - Make Tech Easier: Google has just released a new version of Android Studio, and it has a number of great new features for app developers, including a better layout editor and faster build times, as well as an improved emulator that you can use on your computer without needing to install Android platform-tools on your computer or running special commands to start it up as you do with Genymotion or Bluestacks.
Instant Run
This is one of our favorite Android Studio 4.0 features because it makes debugging much faster. It allows you to update your code or resources without having to restart Android Studio or wait for a complete compile cycle each time, which can take a few minutes on some projects, depending on how many resources you're using.
Profiler
The profiler gives you an overview of your application's performance, helping you pinpoint bottlenecks and find memory leaks to optimize your app. It supports both Android and Java (Android Native Development Kit) apps and enables you to get insights on CPU, memory, network I/O, and battery usage to give your maximum app performance and a smooth user experience. To learn more about using it with Android native code, check out Build Fast Native Apps With Android Studio Profiler. To see how you can use it for debugging memory issues or for multi-process profiling, check out Profiling Memory Issues in Android Applications.
Testing with Kotlin
Now that Google has released Kotlin as an official language for Android development, it's worthwhile to see how it's being used within Android Studio. One of my favorite new features is that you can now create unit tests for your app directly from within Android Studio. But if you're unfamiliar with Kotlin and haven't dabbled with writing unit tests before, how do you get started?
Navigation Editor
Android Studio 4.0 has been around for several months now, but it's still widely used and can be intimidating to those who are new to Android development or new to Android Studio itself. This video will go over some of what's new in Android Studio and point out some helpful shortcuts and tricks you can use as you develop your next app!
File Watchers
Android Studio has dramatically improved support for code editing with syntax highlighting, multi-select, and auto-indent that make it easy to create apps faster than ever before. Now you can get even more out of Android Studio by taking advantage of its new File Watchers feature, which offers a wide range of tools to detect changes to your source code files, convert your project's resources and build different parts of your app based on pre-defined rules.
Live Templates
These new custom code templates make it easier to format your code and keep your app's coding style consistent. Now, Android Studio has code templates for different parts of your codebase, like string templating for strings and color templating for colors. You can also create a new boilerplate from scratch that you can use as a starting point for creating standard classes, and you can import or export those boilerplates into other projects or packages, so they're easy to share and re-use.
Conclusion
Android Studio has been downloaded more than 3 million times, with hundreds of thousands of developers using it for Android app development every day. Its rapid adoption shows how significant an impact it has had on making Android app development possible for anyone with a PC or Mac and a good Internet connection.