- Android App Development Software
- Best Tools For Android App Development System
- Android App Development Tutorial
Below, you’ll find a large range of useful and powerful developer tools. For your convenience, they have been categorized as so:. IDEs – Integrated Development Environments are the main tools you use to build your Android apps, providing the interface where you enter your code. Tools that come with Android Studio – These are the official Android developer tools from Google that come packaged with Android Studio/the Android SDK.
While there are different tools developers use when creating iOS vs. Android apps, for the purpose of this post, we’re going to focus on Android specifically. Here are 5 current best tools for android development that seem to be the most popular among Android developers. The Android Software Development Kit (SDK) is actually a collection of tools that will help you make Android apps. There's more outside the SDK that we'll discuss, but here are some of the most. IntelliJ IDEA, Android Studio, and NetBeans IDE are probably your best bets. And WebStorm and IntelliJ and the environments are for pro develop apps. Studio is also the tool that Google recommends using for Android development.
Advanced external tools – Tools like Github that you will likely use as a more advanced developer. Other tools – A quick rundown of the other types of tools you might encounterLet us know what we missed below, and good luck! Top Android developer tools: IDEsAm IDE is an ‘integrated development environment’, meaning a single interface that lets you input code, and handles things Android StudioNo list of Android development tools would be complete without.
This is the official IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for Android, making it the number one choice for the majority of developers looking to make basic apps in-keeping with Google’s and with access to all the advanced features of the platform.The IDE is where any developer will spend most of their time: it acts as an editor for the chosen programming language (Android Studio supports Java and ), a compiler that can create APK files and a file system for arranging your project. It also includes an XML editor and “design view” for arranging elements on the screen. Android Studio offers an entire suite of additional tools too – some of which we’ll examine in this post – and thankfully most of this will now come bundled together as a single download. In fact, it also comes bundled with the Android SDK itself, though you will still need to download and install the Java JDK separately. You should also check out our full.Developing with Java and the does have a somewhat steep learning curve, but in terms of integration, support and features Android Studio can’t be beaten. Visual Studio With XamarinVisual Studio is Microsoft’s IDE which supports a range of languages including C#, VB.net, JavaScript and more with extensions. Using, which now comes bundled in, it’s also possible to using C# and then test on multiple devices connected to the cloud.
It’s free to use and a good choice if you plan on releasing a utility app for both Android and iOS and don’t fancy writing your code twice. It’s also useful for those that are already familiar with C# and/or Visual Studio. Even for those who have no multi-platform aspirations, it can serve as a powerful and appealing alternative to Android Studio.
One downside however, is that it less convenient to access and use libraries written in Java and as with any alternative, you lose some of Google’s support and advanced integrated features. Unity 3Dis a game engine and IDE for cross-platform game development – and probably the best option for everyone from beginners to advanced users. Unity is easy to learn and comes with a large variety of features for game development. While it’s possible to, Unity lends itself to that kind of work much more readily and will save you a considerable amount of time and headache. It is especially well suited to 2D games, but you also use it to create virtual reality apps for Daydream, Cardboard or the Gear VR!
Check out our for more.Unreal Engineis also a game engine and is a alternative option for those interested in cross-platform, full-featured game development. Like Unity, Unreal offers easy support for Android and is actually graphically superior along with being open source. That said Unity has slightly better built-in support for mobile and 2D creations, and is the preferred option for most mobile game devs. Which one you ultimately decide to go with is your call and as they are both free, there’s no reason you can’t give them both a shot.
Start here if you want to learn.GameMaker: Studiois another tool for game developers, this time for 2D games. This is a little easier than using Unity or Unreal 4 and enables you to create apps with effectively zero code. If you do want to add a little more customization though, then you can get to grips with the very beginner-friendly GML or ‘GameMaker Language’.However, what you get in ease-of-use, you lose to some extent in power and functionality.
It’s also worth noting that GameMaker isn’t free, although there is a free trial available for those that want to give it a shot. Check out our for more information. B4A(Basic for Android) is a lesser known Android development tool from Anywhere Software, focused on “rapid development”. As the name suggests, this is an IDE and interpreter that allows developers to create apps using the BASIC programming language. For those that aren’t familiar with BASIC, it’s essentially a much simpler, procedural programming language that reads closer to regular English. Despite essentially being a one-man project, B4A manages to pack in a lot of useful advanced features; including wireless debugging over Bluetooth, a visual editor for adding and arranging views and more.
It’s not free, but the license is highly affordable. If you are interested, then check out our. Tools that come with Android Studio AVD ManagerThe tool is bundled with Android Studio.
AVD stands for ‘Android Virtual Device’, so essentially this is an emulator for running Android applications on your PC. This is useful because it means that you can test your apps quickly without having to constantly install them on physical devices. More importantly, the AVD Manager allows you to create lots of different emulators with different screen sizes, specifications and versions of Android. This means you can see what your creation will look like on any given device and thereby ensure support across the most popular gadgets. Performance is getting better all the time, especially with the fast virt mode, which runs an Intel version of Android on your PC and removes the need for instruction level emulation.Android Device MonitorAnother built-in Android development tool, the allows you to monitor your device or virtual device during runtime and get access to information such as how many processes are running on what thread, network stats, the LogCat and more.
It’s great for testing the performance of your apps and seeing what’s going on under the. Android Debug BridgeThe shell is a useful little command-line tool that you can use to communicate with or run commands on a connected Android device (virtual or physical). It comes with Android Studio and for the most part you won’t need to worry about it. Every now and then though, you’ll be following a tutorial and find you need to open it up.
To do so, navigate to the platform-tools folder of your or whichever folder adb.exe is located and open up a command line (Shift + RMB Open Command Window Here). Advanced external tools GitHubis a hosting service for Git repositories. In simple parlance, that’s an online tool that you can use in order to share projects and also keep track of multiple versions and “forks” of those projects when you’re working in a team. It’s handy for backing up your work, for collaboration, and for finding code samples and tutorials you can work through. For beginners, your exposure to GitHub will likely be limited to downloading sample projects that you can reverse engineer.
If you ever work on a large app as a team though, this is a developer tool that you’ll need to become very familiar with. Unless the company you’re working with use Mercurial instead!Read More:.Firebaseis not one tool, but rather a whole smorgasbord of Android developer tools!
This is Google’s suite of cloud services for mobile and web developers, and includes a range of services from monetization through AdMob, to safer authentication, to ML Kit (next on this list), to analytics. While beginner developers need not concern themselves with Firebase to begin with, it will almost certainly come in handy at some point once your projects start getting more ambitious.
Android App Development Software
If you hit a road block and you need a new feature that relies on the cloud, check Freibase first! You can find an introduction. ML Kitis an Android developer tool that allows you to add machine learning functionality to your app from Google.
That means adding things like computer vision and OCR without needing a giant budget and heaps of big data. Other Android development toolsAs well as the tools listed above there are many tools and resources out there that can come in handy for beginners. These include “app builders” like, or for building simple apps, or if you need Android emulation without installing Android Studio and the AVD Manager.is a useful tool for experimeinting with Android programming on an Android device, and also includes guided tutorials.For more advanced developers, there are numerous tools, libraries, and resources that have been build by the larger community.
Is one such tool that allows you to easily check example code from or GitHub without needing to leave your IDE. Meanwhile is for quickly finding memory leaks in your app.
Developers will also need to get to grips with a range of other software to supplement their coding activities. You might consider using or for example in order to edit images, or for high definition vector art. Maybe you like the idea of using a wire-framing design tool such as to design your app’s layout, or maybe you’d rather sketch it up by hand. Maybe you’ll use to.Many programs can be used as Android development tools, even if that is not their original purpose.
The options that are right for you will depend on your work style, preferences and goals. Hopefully this list has given you a good introduction to some of the most fundamental tools out there, so that you can dive in and get started.Read Next: Of course let us know in the comments below which tools you are partial to!
Find My Device is probably one of the most valuable Android tools and it's completely free. This app lets you ping the location of your device in the event that it becomes lost or stolen. It's compatible with phones, tablets, and even Wear OS smartwatches. You can also lock your device, erase it, and show a message on your device to plead to the finder to return it.
It's a free service by Google and that makes it so nice. Those who want something a little more powerful should check out Cerberus. It does a lot of the same stuff, but also has more features if you don't mind paying for them. GlassWire is an excellent utility app for many reasons.
It shows when apps use data. This is useful for a lot of things. For starters, those on tiered data plans can see exactly where their data went. Additionally, it's useful for security purposes because you can see when apps send data back to their home servers. You also get customizable data alerts, a real-time graph showing your data usage, and other customization features. It's perfect for those with tiered data plans and also the security conscious. The premium version is also dirt cheap at $0.99.
Best Tools For Android App Development System
The official Google app is one of the most powerful tools on mobile. It can do almost anything. You can ask Google Assistant for the weather or to control your smart lighting setup. Google Now provides a feed of relevant info just for your (although that does take time to customize). We all already know the benefits of Google Search. Google was nice enough to incorporate all of that functionality in a single app and that really makes it difficult not to recommend it to basically everybody. This is an excellent app.
Android App Development Tutorial
IFTTT is another excellent Android tool. This app allows you to make connections between other apps. For instance, you can have the app upload a photo to your Dropbox after you share it on Instagram. That is just scratching the surface of all the things it can do. There are tons of apps that have IFTTT integration built-in and you can even use to do things like control your smart lights. There are thousands of recipes out there and you can find them by Google searching if you want to see them.
Also, don’t forget about the upcoming Microsoft Flow and other, similar utility apps. ProtonVPN is one of the more engaging VPN apps on Android. It has a totally free, unlimited VPN option and that makes it really easy to incorporate into your daily life without much of a hassle. The app includes a strict no-logging policy as well as encryption for your security.
Those who pay the $4 per month tier get higher speeds and support for two devices. The number of features and devices go up from there.
There are a lot of good VPNs. However, this is one of the few with its level of security and then also a totally free option. We would recommend this one all day. Solid Explorer is probably the best file manager on Android right now. It supports the basic stuff, including archiving and un-archiving files, checking your storage folders, moving stuff around, and more. It also has more advanced features like cloud storage support, support for various types of web servers (think FTP and others), and support for root users. There are other file managers out there, but Solid Explorer looks and works great.
It hits that sweet spot between functional and good looking.