As per Statista, Android has captured 85% of the global app market share with the highest numbers of apps in the Google Play Store.
Android app developer community goes beyond 12 million developers as per the latest statistic, and it becomes the most prominent mobile app developer community that exists on the planet today. Therefore, anything happens with Android app development; it leaves more significant impacts than other app ecosystems.
The most discussed concerns of Android app developers of Android App Development Company are performance, speed, and ROI. These all somewhere rely on the Android application development tools, environment, and infrastructure. However, today I will restrict up to Android app development tools and introduce you to the latest tools within its basic categories, such as
- IDEs & Editors
- Tools in Android Studio
- 3rd Party Plugins
- Repository
- Libraries
- Language Resources
IDEs & Editors for Android App Development
IDE stands for an integrated development environment in the software development industry. IDE typically provides a rich and collaborative interface to accomplish the entire software/Android application development process, including coding and relevant tasks.
Android Studio
Android Studio is an official IDE and code editor suite of tools and frameworks provided by Google to the Android developer community.
- It supports Java and Kotlinlike Android programming languages.
- It has a compiler, which creates APK files and offers a filesystem to manage files during projects.
- It includes an XML editor and design view to manage UI elements on the interface/screen.
- It comes with bundled Android SDK kit and JavaJDK kit separately.
Eclipse
Before Android Studio, Eclipse was the primary IDE used for Android development. It is a Java IDE and comes with myriads of plugins to offer extensive customization. Therefore, many developers still use it when Kotlin is not their programming language and accustomed to the Eclipse environment.
IntelliJ IDEA
It is also a Java IDE, and many Android developers prefer it due to out-of-the-box tools and support for modern development.
Unity 3D/4D
It is a game engine and framework for game development. It supports Android game development with complete tools and resources for animations, background creation, and designing game interactions.
Droidedit
It is a text editor for Android coders suitable for coding while on the go. It is integrated with cloud services and allows editing files directly from the cloud.
Visual Studio with Xamarin
It is an initiative from the Microsoft platform, and Xamarin supports cross-platform app development for Android devices, too, using C# programming language.
Cordova & Titanium
These are hybrid Android app development tools using web development languages, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and native wrappers to support mobile browsers.
Tools in Android Studio
Android Studio comes with tons of tools, plugins, SDK, and components. Let’s explore some of those important ones.
Android Virtual Device (AVD) Manager
Out of those built-in tools, the emulator is crucial for Android developers to test the Android application at different phases of the development process.
AVD manager permits developers to create emulators using different parameters such as screen size, specification, and Android OS version.
Android Device Monitor (ADM)
Monitoring the Android app processes during the various testing and development phases enables developers to get deep insights into the processes and decide based on them.
ADM allows the developer to access info like several processes running simultaneously. It shows different threads and network statistics along with logs.
Android Debug Bridge (ADB)
ADB is a command-line tool to run commands on the connected Android device, be it virtual/emulator or actual/physical, to test the Android app under development.
ADB is bridging the gaps between Android Studio and Android devices for testing to debug the app.
Repository
When a team is working on a single project, each designer or programmer changes the code located at a central place. If prescribed change is not acceptable by most team members, the code documents must reverse to the previous version. It is a known phenomenon in the software industry and terms as versioning or version controlling.
It requires a central server with an automated program to keep all versions until final approvals are not accomplished in the project code document. Git repository and GitHub are providing such services to the developer community using cloud computing capabilities.
GitHub provides hosting to Git repositories. It is an online tool for version control. Android developers use it with its free or premium packages depending on the type of projects and needs.
3rd Party Plugins
Code snippets and Add-ons are essential to improve the quality of code, speed of development, work efficiencies, and add more features or functionality in the Android app development project. Plugins or extensions usually work with IDE or code editors. Android Studio, IntelliJ, and Eclipse are the most beneficial IDEs to extend their features and functions with custom plugins. The following list of plugins can give insights to get the best for your project.
Kotlin Plugin
Java as JVM to get support for Java coding and implementation of the code. Most Android IDEs support Java and JVM as built-in components.
To get support for Kotlin code, you need additional plugins, and Kotlin plugins provide the same. Kotlin plugin also supports the conversion of Java code into Kotlin code provides a viewer with insights into what Kotlin compiler does under the carpet.
Android Draw-able Importer Plugin
Draw-able imports from image or icon resources are vital, and the plugin enables it for your Android development project. It allows Google’s Material Design icons imports and imports from multiple sources using the list with filtering capacities based on keywords.
Draw-able optimizer helps developers to optimize imported images quickly and easily. The plugin recognizes the naming pattern for multi-source-draw able and avoids repetitions of images or Material Design elements while importing all.
GenyMotion IDEA Plugin
GenyMotionis an excellent and reliable emulator mostly found in IntelliJ IDE. If you want it to run in other IDEs, it offers a set of plugins to allow GenyMotion VMs to run and get the best out of its features.
Android Parcel-able Plugin
Parcelable or Serializable objects in android code can easily pass through activities. Parcelable is a rapid selection but demands tons of boilerplate code. The plugin can do it and can create different codes as per the type of field.
LeakCanary Plugin
It helps to detect memory leaks and automatically displays the leak information to help in fixing it.
Key Promoter Plugin
It helps developers to get instant remainders through the display window for the most suitable keyboard shortcut in the proper contexts while coding.
Conclusion
The list of Android development tools is exhaustive, but we have tried to offer you the best and most practical tools for any scale of Android application development. SysBunny is an experienced team of Android developers, and they have brainstorming before giving you any name of tools.
Have you an idea of an Android app development project in mind? Feel free to leverage Android developers’ talents at a leading Android App Development Company and skillsets to get the best app for you at highly competitive rates.
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