What are the best IDEs for Android development?

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score 109 · Accepted Answer

IntelliJ IDEA

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Top Pro

Free version available

There is a free community edition (open source) and an ultimate edition, which you can compare here. The ultimate edition is available for free for one year for students but must be registered through an .edu e-mail account. See More

Top Con

Somewhat expensive

IntelliJ IDEA is fairly expensive, with a pricetag of $149/year. However there is a free community edition available. See More

WiseZisa's Experience

I develop with PHPStorm and WebStorm and IntelliJ and the environments are for pro develop apps. See More

Top Pro

Stable and robust

If any file was corrupted by the IDE you don't have to restart your project. See More

Top Con

Uses too much RAM

LikableHoenir's Experience

Fast, responsive interface and plugins function properly. BEST plugins for Java post build. See More

Top Pro

Smart refactorings

IDEA places an emphasis in safe refactoring, offering a variety of features to make this possible for a variety of languages. These features include safe delete, type migration and replacing method code duplicates. See More

MellowGalene's Experience

Really well done IDE. I love it See More

Top Pro

Fast and smart contextual assistance

Uses a fast indexing technique to provide contextual hints (auto-completion, available object members, import suggestions). On-the-fly code analysis to detect errors and propose refactorization. See More

AdaptableFufluns's Experience

it's so good See More

Top Pro

Lots of plugins

Many plugins are available for almost any task a developer may need to cover. Plugins are developed by Jetbrains themselves or by 3rd parties through the SDK available for writing them. See More

Top Pro

Hassle-free experience

Many other products just have so many bugs, gotchas, etc. The price is well worth the savings in headaches and problems. See More

Top Pro

Intuitive and slick UI

IDEA has a clean, intuitive interface with some customization available (such as the Darcula theme). See More

Top Pro

Clear and detailed documentation

The documentation is exhaustive, easy to navigate and clearly worded. See More

Top Pro

Many convenient features

These simplify the daily work, e.g. copy/cut a whole line without the need to select it. See More

Top Pro

Built-in Git support

Top Pro

Android support, JavaEE support, etc.

A very complete development environment support. See More

Top Pro

Very powerful debugger

It has the ability to step into a certain part of a large method invocation (Shift+F7), dropping frames, executing code snippets, showing method return values, etc. See More

Top Pro

Gradle support

Top Pro

Support for many languages

IntelliJ supports many languages besides Java, some of these are: golang, Scala, Clojure, Groovy, Bash, etc. See More

Top Pro

Fast and smart contextual assistance

Uses a fast indexing technique to provide contextual hints (auto-completion, available object members, import suggestions). On-the-fly code analysis to detect errors and propose refactorization. See More

See All

The Best 2 of 13 OptionsWhy?

My Recommendation for IntelliJ IDEA

My Recommendation for IntelliJ IDEA

Free version available

Somewhat expensive

Stable and robust

Uses too much RAM

Smart refactorings

Fast and smart contextual assistance

Lots of plugins

Hassle-free experience

Intuitive and slick UI

Clear and detailed documentation

Many convenient features

Built-in Git support

Android support, JavaEE support, etc.

Very powerful debugger

Gradle support

Support for many languages

Fast and smart contextual assistance

My Recommendation for Android Studio

My Recommendation for Android Studio

Officially supported by Google

Many errors that are almost impossible to remove

Based on the powerful IntelliJ IDEA

High memory use

Extremely easy to integrate Google Services

Many offline issues

Uses the powerful Gradle build tool out of the box

Apps run slow on the ARM version of the emulator

Pushes fast to the built-in emulator

Android development only

Allows GPU tracking

Extremely fast preview

Supports many platforms

Live code updates and renderings of app

Intelligently replaces values

Can test Google Play Services API straight from the emulator

11 Other Options Considered

My Recommendation for NetBeans IDE

My Recommendation for NetBeans IDE

Very complicated user interface and setup

Cross-platform

Little support for UML

Slow

My Recommendation for AIDE

My Recommendation for AIDE

Calculates multiple checksums

Checksums stored in plaintext

Supports complicated file excludes

My Recommendation for Xamarin.Android

My Recommendation for Xamarin.Android

Cross-platform

Lacking third-party library support

Allows .NET programmers to write Android Apps

Too large to download

Programming in C#

Open source

Fast build

My Recommendation for JetBrains Rider

My Recommendation for JetBrains Rider

Cross-platform

Does not support Xamarin Forms

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My Recommendation for Visual Studio Code

My Recommendation for Visual Studio Code

Inline definition picking and usages finding

Huge community behind it

Fast and powerful

Libre/open source

Integrated task runners

Ready to use out of the box

Great performance

Updated frequently

Extendable through plug-ins

My Recommendation for RAD studio

My Recommendation for RAD studio

Latest and greatest cross platform compiler for delphi

Subscription updates

My Recommendation for Komodo IDE