Google has announced the latest stable version of the Android Studio 2022.2.1, codenamed Flamingo, on its Android Developers Blog. It is the official IDE for building apps running on Android. This version has come with four major updates.
UI Tools
- Jetpack Compose and Material 3 templates - Since Jetpack Compose is now advised for new projects, Material 3 and Jetpack Compose are used by default in the templates.
- Live Edit (Compose) experimental - By using Compose, this feature pushes code changes directly to the emulator or connected device to iteratively build the app. The changes are saved automatically. Developers can see the UI updates in real time.
- Themed app icon preview support - You can see the live preview of how the app icon will react based on the theme or wallpaper.
- Dynamic color preview - This new feature enables you to dynamically change the UI color profile based on the wallpaper of the device.
Build
- Build analyzer task categorization - The new version of the build analyzer can now group tasks into categories like Manifest, Kotlin, and Android Resources. They are sorted by the time taken to build. You can visually easily identify the portions that consume the most time.
- One-click automated profileable build and run - After configuring a profileable app, it can automatically build and run the non-debuggable build with one click.
- Link support for SDK extensions - The IDE automatically scans for errors and automatically updates the APIs to the correct version.
- Android Gradle Plugin 8.0.0 - The new Gradle version comes with a list of improvements, behavior changes, and the Transform API removal.
Inspect
- Updates to App Quality Insights - It comes with a host of tools to improve app quality and performance.
- Network Inspector traffic interception - It allows you to create and manage rules to adjust app behavior. You can modify and intercept the app responses.
- Auto-connect to foreground process in Layout Inspector - The foreground process will automatically be connected by the Layout Inspector moving forward.
IntelliJ
- IntelliJ Platform Update - The new IntelliJ 2022.2 platform update contains performance improvements for the IDE, rendering on macOS and Kotlin when searching code, and auto-completion.
How to Update
If you haven"t received an update notification inside the IDE, you can manually update from here. There is no change in system requirements, so your current system will work fine. For new users, you can follow the step-by-step guideline from Android right here.