By Adarsh Fernando, Android product Manager

Like diligent bees, the Android Studio team has been busy with Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1) 🐝 and the stable version of Android Gradle plugin (AGP) 7.1.0, Work on the latest version of Android’s official IDE and build system. We have refined many of the functions involved in a typical development workflow: build and deploy, analyze and review, and design.

Some notable new features include: Unified testing between Android Studio and your continuous integration (CI) server ✅, convenient pairing process (with Wi-Fi access to ADB📲), improved profiling tools to help you identify and analyze cardons 🕵️ in your application, As well as preview animations 🎥 and interface interactions without deploying the application to the device.

As usual, there won’t be a stable release without early feedback from preview users. Keep reading or watch this video to learn more about the highlights and new features of this stable release. Download Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1) and get your hands on it.

New features for Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1)

Here’s a full list of new features for Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1), organized by three major themes.

Build and deploy

  • New Device Manager – You can use Bumblebee’s new tools window to more easily view and manage virtual and physical test devices. Simply choose View > Tool Windows > Device Manager from the main menu. In the Virtual TAB, you can create a new device, view device details, delete a device, or perform any of the other actions you used to perform in AVD Manager (now removed). You can use ADB Wi-Fi to quickly pair with a new Device and see details about each Physical Device at a glance in the Physical TAB, or use the Device File Explorer to quickly examine each Device’s File system with a single click. Go to the release notes to learn more about the new device manager.

    △ Device Manager

  • Using ADB-BumbleBee over Wi-Fi provides a simplified process to connect Android 11 and later devices over Wi-Fi for deployment and debugging with ADB. After you have enabled debugging over Wi-Fi on your Device, on the Physical TAB of the new Device Manager, select Pair Using Wi-Fi to open the Pairing wizard. Then follow the instructions to pair with devices connected to the same network. Please read the official documentation for details.

    △ Use ADB matching device over Wi-Fi

  • Running piling tests in Android Studio with Gradle – Have you ever run the same test on Android Studio and CI and got different results? This problem is not only disappointing, it can lead to a loss of productivity. To address this issue, we introduced a new test runner in Android Gradle Plugin (AGP) 7.1.0 that will be used by Android Studio Bumblebee when running pile tests by default. So all your tests run with a unified test runner. We provided a similar improvement in Android Studio Arctic Fox, which runs all unit tests through Gradle by default. Again, this improvement doesn’t require you to change the way you write or run tests!

    The results vary with the use of different runners

    Android Studio now runs piling tests with Gradle

  • Android Gradle plugin update Assistant now updates API usage – AGP Update Assistant was originally launched in Android Studio 4.2 to help users update their projects to the latest version. The updated Upgrade Assistant in Arctic Fox provides a new interface where users can view and select upgrade versions and steps. In Bumblebee, the Upgrade Assistant now also checks and provides update DSL options to help you avoid deprecated but not yet removed apis. For more information, see “Android Gradle Plugin DSL/API Migration Schedule “.

  • Enable non-transitive R classes for New Projects – Android Studio Arctic Fox has released a new refactoring tool that helps you speed up building applications with multiple modules using non-transitive R classes. When you create a new project using Bumblebee, the IDE defaults to configuring the project to use a non-transitive R class. While this does improve performance, you must now refer to the R class by the correct package name rather than the package name of the parent module, because the R class will no longer be resolved in pass-through mode.

  • The Emulator Tools window is enabled by default – this feature first appeared in Android Studio 4.1. You can launch the emulator in the Android Studio tools window, deploy and interact with a virtual Android device, while remaining in the IDE. Improvements in Bumblebee include providing extended controls and better managing snapshots. For more information, see “Running the Android Emulator directly in Android Studio.”

  • Apple Silicon Support Update – For people using macOS on Apple Silicon (ARM64) hardware, this new architecture has been available since last year with Android Studio Arctic Fox and the Android Emulator. But in the stable version, we upgraded the Android SDK platform tools v32.0.0 (including ADB and Fastboot) and the build tools v32.1.0 (including AAPT) to generic binaries. This allows your Android developer tools to run directly without relying on the Rosetta binary translator. Based on community feedback, developers on the hardware platform have seen significant performance improvements. Please read the release notes for details.

Analysis and inspection

  • Caton Detection Traces in Performance Profiler – When analyzing your application with devices running Android 11 (API level 30) or higher, CPU Performance Profiler now displays a new set of traces to depict the stages of each Frame under the Frame Lifecycle: Application, Wait for GPU, Composition, and Frames on display. Each track is marked with a frame number and is distinguished by different colored rectangles so you can easily see where a particular frame is in its life cycle, as well as helper lines that you can turn on or off at any time to compare with Vsync events. You can use this data to understand where stutter might occur in your application and investigate the root cause. A New Frame TAB has been added to the Analysis panel to summarize render information for all Frames for your convenience. For more information, see “Interface Lag detection”.

    △ Frame life cycle details in CPU performance profiler

  • The Studio Performance Profiler enables profiling of analyzable applications – when profiling applications, the version of the application needs to be close to the one the user will install, which is important to generate accurate data. To achieve this, you can now add attributes to the application list to analyze undebugable applications, as shown below:

    <profileable android:shell="true"/>
Copy the code

    Profileable is a list configuration introduced in Android 10 that can be used for CPU and memory analysis tasks. Profileable rather than debuggable tags can significantly reduce the overhead of measuring performance. However, certain analysis capabilities are not available for analyzable builds, such as Event Timeline, API-initiated CPU analysis, heap dumps, or real-time location logging. For more information, see Analyzable applications.

  • Check Jobs, Alerts, and Wake Locks – The Background Task Inspector has been expanded to allow you to check jobs, alerts, and wake locks. You can view real-time information about background task schedules and details of their execution in a similar way to checking a Worker. In addition, while checking the Worker, you can track and check the jobs it has scheduled for you. If you have used an Energy Profiler in older ides, You can now navigate to the menu bar View > Tool Windows > App Inspection and select the Background Task Inspector. To check operations, alarms, and wake locks.

    Check jobs, alarms, and wake locks in background task checker

  • Network Inspection – The Network Profiler has now migrated to the App Inspection tool window, allowing you to examine Network traffic in your application in a lighter way. The look and feel of the network analyzer is preserved and can be used to run all debugable applications on devices with API level 26 and higher. To use the new analyzer, choose View > Tool Windows > App Inspection from the menu bar, and then select Network Inspector. For more information, see “Checking Network Traffic with a Network analyzer.”

  • Take a Layout Inspector Snapshot – You can now take a snapshot of the application layout hierarchy to save, share, or review later. The snapshot captures the data you would normally see when using the Layout Inspector, including a detailed 3D rendered Layout and tree of components for View, Compose, or hybrid layouts, as well as detailed properties for each component of the interface. To check the layout of the running application, click Export Snapshot on the layout inspector toolbar and save the snapshot using the *. Li extension. To load the layout inspector snapshot, choose File > Open from the main menu and Open the *.li File. The snapshot is displayed in a TAB in the editor window so you can easily compare it to a running application. For more information, see “Taking a Layout Hierarchy Snapshot.”

  • Support for Compose semantics in the layout inspector – In Compose, the semantics describe your interface in a way that accessible services and testing frameworks can understand. In Android Studio Bumblebee, you can use the layout inspector to check the semantic information for the Compose layout. When selecting the Compose node, use the Attributes window to check whether it declares semantic information directly, merges the semantics of its children, or both. To quickly identify which nodes contain semantics, whether declarative or merged, Select the View Options drop-down menu in the Component Tree window and select Highlight Semantics Layers.

design

  • Interactive Preview – Android Studio Arctic Fox supports static preview of composable functions in the Design/Split window of the editor. In Bumblebee, this feature has been extended so that you can interact with certain components of the Compose layout to verify behavior without having to build the full application and deploy it to a running device! To Start using this feature, navigate to the Compose function, which is previewable, and click Start Interactive Mode in the Design/Split window. For more information, see “Interactive Mode”.

    Interact with Compose Preview to verify behavior

  • Animated Vector Drawable Object Preview – You can now view vector drawable objects using the Preview window. When viewing static drawable objects, you can set the “transparent”, “white”, “black”, and “checkered” background styles for the preview window to view drawable objects under different conditions. Animatrable objects can be previewed at different speeds and backgrounds to help you test them before adding them to your application. For more information, see animated Vector Drawable Objects (AVD) Preview.

    Preview your animation vector for drawable objects

  • Device selector Updates for Design Tools – To simplify your process of designing applications for a variety of Android devices, we have updated device selectors in the Layout Editor and Layout Validation Windows of several design tools, It provides reference devices that reflect the prevailing size of each device type. From phones to tablets, Wear devices to Android TV, you can now more easily preview, validate, or edit layouts on the screen size that best represents the common devices of today. For more information, see “Change preview Appearance.”

A quick summary of the new optimizations and features of Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1) :

Build and deploy

  • Run piling tests in Android Studio using Gradle
  • Android Gradle Plugin Update Assistant can now update API usage
  • Enable non-transitive R classes for new projects
  • New Device Manager
  • Use ADB over Wi-Fi
  • The emulator tools window is enabled by default
  • Apple Silicon supports updates

Analysis and inspection

  • Caton detection trace in performance profiler
  • The Studio performance profiler supports analyzable applications
  • Check jobs, alarms, and wake locks in the background task inspector
  • Gets the layout inspector snapshot
  • Support for the Compose semantics in the layout inspector

design

  • The interactive preview
  • Animate vector can draw object preview
  • Design tool device selector update

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