What Every Android Developer Needs to Know About Google I/O 2016

Develop

Android Studio 2.2 has added quite a few new tools and features to improve development productivity.

• Improved code analysis and quality checks that include new lint checks and code checks for Java 8.
• A code sample browser that provides sample snippets and sample code for the symbol that you currently have selected in Android Studio.
• Permission inference and code generation to automatically request detected required permissions.
• Highlighting and removal of unused resources within Android Studio.
• New annotations, including ones for resource type checking and for keeping specific methods safe from Proguard
• A Firebase plugin that assists you when adding Firebase to your app.
• Improved support for C++.
• The latest updates from IntelliJ 2016.1.

Build

In regards to builds, the Tools team has made improvements to the Jack compiler, including support for annotations and reduced build times for incremental builds. Also there is now a merged manifest viewer that allows you to analyze the dependencies and permissions in your app for your various build variants.

Test

Two of my favorite new Android Studio announcements were the Espresso test recorder and the APK analyzer.

The Espresso Test Recorder aims to make generating UI tests incredibly simple. When the Test Recorder is active and you are interacting with your app, Espresso test code is generated automatically based on your interactions. This test code is reusable and editable.

Getting to watch the code generated as the Tools team moved through an app was pretty amazing and fun. Test recorder eliminates a whole bunch of excuses for not getting started UI testing.

By using the APK analyzer, you can view a breakdown of the memory usage of an APK by raw file size as well as download size. The APK analyzer is also a great tool for keeping your app’s method limit under control with detailed method and reference counts. You can even drill down to the app resources and see the compiled versions of them.

But wait, there’s more…

There were just so many improvements and new features that it would take a while to go through each and every one. For the full scoop, check out the What’s new in Android development tools session from Google I/O and read up on Android Studio 2.2 at the Android Developers Blog.

Where To Go From Here?

Google I/O 2016 definitely had its share of party and spectacle, but what should really get Android developers excited is the sheer number of new platforms and new tools that improve both the quality and functionality of apps as well as the productivity of developers. There really is more content than I can cover here, but luckily all of the Google I/O sessions were recorded and can be viewed on the Android Developers YouTube channel.

I hope you enjoyed this recap and are as excited as I am about all the incredible Android news from Google I/O this year!