Android Studio 2.2 now out: Here’s what’s new

The Android developer community is certainly one of the most diverse and numerous out there – and it’s no wonder given Android’s wide reach across all parts of the world. But there is one thing that they nevertheless have in common, and that is that the majority of developers use Android Studio to create their apps.

Android Studio is Google’s own program that allows these developers to code their applications. It has grown in leaps and bounds thanks to consistent updates, and the latest of these updates is now in fact live and out for download. We saw what this update entails at I/O back in May, where it was formally announced but not actually released.

Here’s just some of the new features and tools which developers can expect to see in V2.2:

Design 

• Layout Editor: A new user interface designer that helps you visually design the layouts in your app. Features like blueprint mode and the new properties panel allow you to quickly edit layouts and widgets faster.

• Constraint Layout: A new powerful and flexible Android layout that allows you to express complex UIs without nesting multiple layouts.

• Layout Inspector: Debug a snapshot of your app layout running on the Android Emulator or device. Inspect the view hierarchy and corresponding attributes

Develop

• Firebase Plugin: Explore and integrate the suite of services offered by Firebase inside of Android Studio. Adding services like Analytics, Authentication, Notifications, and AdMob are just a few clicks away.

• Enhanced Code Analysis: Android Studio checks the quality of your Android app code. In addition to 260 Android lint and code inspections, this release includes new code quality checks for Java 8 language usage and a new inspection infrastructure for more cross-file analysis.

• Samples Browser: Referencing Android sample code is now even easier. Within the code editor window, find occurrences of your app code snippets in Google Android sample code to help jump start your app development.

• Improved C++ Support: Android Studio 2.2 improves C++ development with the ability to edit, build, and debug pre-existing Android projects that use ndk-build or CMake rather than Gradle. Additionally, the existing lldb C++ debugger is now even better with project type auto-detection and a Java language aware C++ mode that lets you use a single debugger process to inspect both Java language and C++ runtimes.

• IntelliJ 2016.1: Android Studio 2.2 includes all the latest updates from the underlying JetBrains product platforms IntelliJ.

The full list of changes is available here, the ones shown here are just some of the most prominent adjustments and features.

The program can be updated by downloading a package through the internet or via in built-in update feature within Android Studio (region dependent).

Happy coding!