Author/Modern Android Development team
This year’s Google I/O conference introduced a number of updates to modern Android development. The top three highlights you need to know can be viewed here.
#1: Lots of new Jetpack libraries are now available!
In recent months, several Jetpack libraries have entered the stable, Beta, or Alpha stages. Some key points are as follows:
- Stable versions: CameraX, Hilt, Paging 3.0, ConstraintLayout, MotionLayout and Jetpack Compose (to be stable in July)
- Beta: DataStore
- New Jetpack libraries (now available in Alpha): Macrobenchmark, AppSearch and Google Shortcuts
For more of the latest updates and an in-depth look at Macrobenchmark, check out the following video:
- Jetpack update at a glance
- Compose Update
- Start and stall using Macrobenchmark measurement application
#2: Inspector in Android Studio
Debug your application easily with all the inspectors provided by Android Studio Arctic Fox: For background work, such as knowing the status of the WorkManager worker, you can use the Background Task Inspector; For Android View and Compose, you can use the Layout Inspector. You can use the Database Inspector for Database debugging.
To see the inspector in action, watch the video.
#3: New feature for Kotlin
We will continue to improve Kotlin at every level of Android, from tools to apis, providing you with different ways to learn. Kotlin Symbol Processing (KSP) is now available in Alpha and provides a simplified compiler plug-in API that runs twice as fast as KAPT. We’re working with JetBrains to address performance issues in the IDE, and we’re seeing a 20-fold increase in auto-import proposals. We added StateFlow support for DataBinding and a new API for observing flows in the UI without using DataBinding. To see all the improvements we’ve made to Kotlin, check out the video.
You can find all of this year’s Google I/O conference presentations on modern Android development on YouTube playlists, and check out more Google I/O 2021 highlights over at Bilibili.