Google wants to improve the overall app development experience in Android Studio. The company has announced a 2.0 beta release of the official Android IDE that provides performance and emulator speed enhancements.
“Android Studio 2.0 is a big release, and now is a good time to check out the beta release to incorporate the new features into your workflow,” wrote Jamal Eason, product manager for Android, in a blog post. “The beta release is near stable release quality, and should be relatively bug free. But as with any beta release, bugs may still exist, so, if you do find an issue, let us know so we can work to fix it.”
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The latest beta version features the previously previewed Instant Run feature, a new emulator, and app indexing.
- Instant Run allows developers to edit code and deploy faster. With Instant Run, developers can make changes to their application’s code while it is running on a device or emulator. “Instead of waiting for your entire app to rebuild and redeploy after each code change, Android Studio 2.0 will try to incrementally build and push only the incremental code or resource change,” Eason wrote.
- The Android emulator includes a new user interface, and is designed to be faster than most real devices, according to Eason. Features include improved rotation controls and multi-touch support.
- App Indexing now enables developers to test and validate URL links in their apps within the IDE.
Other Android Studio 2.0 beta features include improvements to the Android Debug Bridge, enhancements to the GPU profiler preview, and integration with IntelliJ IDEA 15.
