The release today of Android Studio Dolphin is focused on Jetpack Compose, the toolkit for native UI; Wear OS, the operating system for wearable devices; and on development productivity.
The Jetpack Compose update includes a new Compose UI counter within the Layout Inspector to monitor when the UI recomposes during the debugging process. The release also includes new tooling for previewing multiple screens and animations, according to the team’s announcement.
The stable Android Studio Dolphin (2021.3.1) release also includes features that help developers get their applications, tiles and watch faces prepped for Wear OS 3 devices. Among them are an updated emulator, pairing assistant and new deployment flows for launch tiles and watch faces.
Finally, on the productivity side, the team enabled Gradle Managed Virtual Devices in Android Studio to have a central place to manage test devices.
To try out the Android Studio Dolphin release, download it here.
