By Amanda Alexander, Android Product Manager
We are pleased to announce that Android Studio Arctic Fox is now available on the stable release channel and welcome to download. This latest release supports Jetpack Compose 1.0, a new Android toolkit for building native interfaces. It also emphasizes coverage of multiple device types, including Wear OS devices, and offers features such as a new background Task Manager to help developers improve productivity. Based on developer feedback, we’ve built the new Android Studio suite to help the developer community build high-quality, modern apps faster across a wide range of devices!
Please note: Last year, we announced a change to the Android Studio version numbering scheme to match the year and version of the IntelliJ IDEA on which Android Studio is based, and to add our own patch numbers. We’ll use the code names (in alphabetical order): The first is Arctic Fox, and the second is Bumblebee (currently in Canary). Android Studio Arctic Fox (2020.3.1) updates Android Studio to version 2020.3 of the IntelliJ platform, adding a number of new features, Includes debugger interactive prompts, VCS updates, and several new code editor improvements to improve your productivity. Please read the IntelliJ release notes for details.
To allow you to quickly modernize your UI, we’ve added additional functionality for Jetpack Compose. With Compose Preview, you can create previews for multiple components of the Compose UI to see the changes your modifications have made in real time in multiple dimensions, such as theme, screen, and font size. The ability to Deploy Preview to a device lets you Deploy the Compose snippet directly to a device or emulator to quickly test a small piece of code. We’ve added support for Compose to the Layout Inspector so you can easily understand how your Layout is rendered if you need to dig deeper into your Layout. In addition, we’ve added real-time character editing, so you can see the results of changes in the Compose code in your preview and when you run your application on an emulator or physical device, without having to compile it again.
To enhance device support, we built a new Wear OS Pairing Assistant to make it easier to pair Wear OS emulators with physical or virtual phones. You can also immediately use the latest version of Wear OS with the Developer Preview version of Wear OS 3 system image. When you run the Wear OS simulator, you’ll also find that we’ve added support for the Heart Rate Sensor API. We’ve added the latest Google TV remote control features to our Google TV-oriented applications and updated the Google TV system image so you can experience the latest interface design. In addition, we have improved the Development and testing workflow for Automotive OS, allowing developers to use simulators to replay vehicle sensor data to simulate driving scenarios. For tablet-oriented apps, we’ve updated all the templates to natively support landscape. Whether you’re developing for small or large screens, we’ve added new features to help you continue to build innovative and great apps.
Finally, to make developers more productive, we’ve added some features that will make you more productive. For example, we’ve added Lint checks to Android 12 to help you build apps for the next generation of Android. To help you test your code, we’ve added the Accessibility Scanner to the Layout Editor to make it easier for you to identify Accessibility issues in your Layout, The new Test Matrix allows you to view Test results in real-time across multiple devices in parallel. In addition, we added preview support for hardware with An Apple chip (ARM64) and extended the emulator controls to expand our testing coverage. Finally, on the debugging side, the new Background Task Inspector helps you analyze your application’s Background Task worker.
The list of improvements in Android Studio Arctic Fox is endless. For a complete list of updates, see the Android Studio Arctic Fox (2020.3.1) Beta release article and release notes. You can also watch the video for the must-see updates.
design
Use the @Preview annotation to generate a Preview of the Compose code and visualize different configurations of multiple components, such as different devices or themes. Compose Preview makes it easier to create mental maps for the Composables in your code.
Delta Compose the Preview
The Layout Inspector supports Compose
Whether your app is built entirely with Compose or a combination of Compose and Views, the Layout Inspector lets you get more details about your Layout and troubleshoot problems. For example, you can see the parameters and modifiers passed to each Composable. You can also choose to enable Live Updates to stream data from the device while developing the application.
Delta Compose Layout Inspector
Character real-time editing
You can now quickly edit characters (strings, numbers, Boolean operations, and so on) in your code and immediately see the changes on the screen (whether preview, emulator, or physical device) without compiling.
Real-time character editing: Edit the character string and view the result in the preview
equipment
Wear OS matching
The new Wear OS Pairing Assistant will help you pair, simplifying the process of pairing Wear OS emulators with virtual or physical phones. Please note that this feature is currently available with Wear OS 2 devices, with Wear OS 3 support coming soon. Please read the official documentation for details.
△ Wear OS simulator Matching Assistant dialog box
— Mobile phone and watch simulator are successfully paired
Developer productivity
Background Task Inspector
When using the WorkManager library version 2.5.0 or higher on devices running API level 26 or higher, you can use the new Background Task Inspector to visualize, monitor, and debug your application’s Background Task processor. To access the Tool, choose View > Tool Windows > App Inspection from the menu bar. Please read the official documentation for details.
Here’s a quick summary of the new optimizations and features in the stable release of Android Studio Arctic Fox (2020.3.1) :
design
- Compose Preview
- Background Task Inspector
- Deploy the preview to the device
- Character real-time editing
equipment
- Wear OS matching
- Heart rate sensor
- New Wear OS image
- Google TV remote control
- Google TV system image
- Automotive OS sensor playback
- Tablet template support
Developer productivity
- IntelliJ 2020.3.1
- Android 12 Lint check
- Nontransitive R class refactoring
- Apple chips support preview
- Android emulator extension controls
- Background Task Inspector
- Accessibility Scanner in the Layout Editor
- Test Matrix
- New recording interface for Memory Profiler
- AGP upgrade Assistant improvements
- C++ editor: sets the execution point in the debugger
For more details, see Android Studio version notes, Android Gradle plugin version notes, and Android Emulator version notes.
Start using immediately
Download the Android Studio
You can download the latest version of Android Studio Arctic Fox right now, or download the Apple Chip Preview. If you are using a previous version of Android Studio, you can simply update to the latest version of Android Studio. If you want to keep a stable version of Android Studio, you can run both Android Studio Arctic Fox Stable and Canary. Please read the official documentation for details.
We look forward to your feedback, whether it’s about content you like, issues with the product, or features you’d like to add. If you find any errors or problems, feel free to submit them to us.