Android Studio : Comparison of various versions and features

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Android Studio is a critical IDE that helps developers design PlayStore app crucial for several business workflows. The Ide sees frequent upgrades with new features and various other enhancements. We will discuss some of the past Android Studio versions for PlayStore and some of the major components of these releases.

Android Studio Bumblebee | 2021.1.1

Android Developers Blog: Android Studio Bumblebee (2021.1.1) Stable

Animated Vector Drawable (AVD)

The tool can provide the preview to preview animated drawable resources, like <animated-vector>, <animation-list>, and <animated-selector>. It can preview various preview resources across Android Studio. It can refine your customised animations.

Layout Inspector update

It allows developers to save a few snapshots of the layout hierarchy of the app. It can help easier reference to the PlayStore app and share with others. The snapshots will capture the data, and there is a 3D rendering of the layout. There are detailed attributes for all UI components and the component tree of the Compose, View and the hybrid layout.

Android Studio Arctic Fox | 2020.3.1

Android Developers Blog: Android Studio Arctic Fox (2020.3.1) Stable

New Background Task Inspector

The feature helped developers monitor, visualise, and debug the app’s background workers. When the individual workers are clicked, it can show how they were executed, the execution result, and the details of the worker chain.

Updated Database Inspector

This feature was included in the App Inspection window. The developers found it easy to export tables, databases, and query results from the Database Inspector to save and recreate locally. The developers could export data in CSV, SQL, or DB formats based on whether they were exporting a table, database, or query result.

Android Studio Chipmunk | 2021.2.1

Android Developers Blog: Android Studio Chipmunk

Support for app profiling

Developers could detect jank on Android version 12 or above. Captured traces are shown in Janky frames at the Display pane in CPU Profiler. The Profiler would show the Janky frames for further investigation.

App creation with Jetpack Compose

The release supported the animatedVisibility API in Animation Preview. Developers had to use Compose version 1.1.0 or higher. Android development is easy as developers could also deploy previews from the library modules. The preview allowed them to view the UI within Android Studio without running the app on a physical device. @Preview could be deployed to a specific emulator or physical device from the library modules.

Conclusion

Android Studio can help app developers design a complex PlayStore app with ease. There are several features which can help enhance developer productivity. You can go through some of the earlier releases and some critical elements associated with Android development.

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