Android Studio Flamingo upgrades UI tooling

Latest version of Android Studio uses Jetpack Compose and Material 3 for new projects by default, introduces live editing for UIs as an experimental feature.

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By Paul Krill
Editor at Large, InfoWorld
Apr 15, 2023 2:00 AM

Android Studio Flamingo, the latest version of the official IDE for Android app development, is available in a stable release. New features include Jetpack Compose and Material 3 templates, live editing for Compose UIs, and new app inspection capabilities.

Accessible from developer.android.com and based on JetBrains’ IntelliJ IDEA 2022.2 IDE, Android Studio Flamingo is numbered as version 2022.2.1.

Among the many new UI tools, Flamingo introduces the ability to preview themed app icons. Developers can use the System UI Mode selector on the toolbar to switch wallpapers and see how themed app icons react to the chosen wallpaper.

The Jetpack Compose UI toolkit is now recommended for new projects, which now use Jetpack Compose and Material 3 templates by default. Live Edit for Compose UIs, an experimental feature, allows developers to push code changes to an attached device or emulator and watch the UI update in real time. Flamingo also adds support for Compose composition tracing, which allows developers to view Compose functions in the system tracing profiler and measure rendering times.

Android Studio Flamingo was introduced on April 13. Also in Flamingo:

  • A one-click automated profile-able build and run capability makes it easier to profile a non-debuggable build that users will be running.
  • Build Analyzer now groups tasks by categories such as Manifest, Android Resources, Kotlin, and Dexing.
  • Developers can enable dynamic color in an app and use the new wallpaper attribute in a @Preview composable to switch wallpapers and see how the UI reacts to different wallpapers.
  • WIth lint support, SDK extensions now can be scanned for and fixed.
  • Network Inspector now shows all traffic data for the full timeline by default.
  • Layout Inspector now automatically connects to the foreground process. Developers no longer have to click to attach it to the app.
  • Flamingo ships with the Android Gradle 8.0 plugin for application builds. The upgrade includes a number of breaking changes including developers no longer being able to change values for a variety of flags.