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What are the best IDEs for Android development in Java?

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3 Options Considered

3 Options ConsideredPricePlatformsPrice
Android Studio
Windows, macOS, LinusFree
IntelliJ IDEA
Windows, macOS, Linux –
Eclipse + Android Development Tools plugin
Windows, Mac(OS), Linux–
See Full List

Android Studio

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Officially supported by Google

•••
Android Studio is the software built by Google themselves to be used for Android Development. As such, it's certain that support for it will never drop as long as Android apps are still being developed. Studio is also the tool that Google recommends using for Android development and it's t...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Extremely easy to integrate Google Services

•••
Because it's made by Google to be the tool to be used for Android Development, it's also very easy for Google to add great support for their services in the IDE and make it easier to integrate Google Services into Android applications built with Studio.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Uses the powerful Gradle build tool out of the box

•••
Android Studio uses Gradle as the official build tool for projects, moving away from the now outdated Apache Ant. Gradle is a powerful build tool, especially for Android development with which it's very easy to do things that are otherwise impossible or very hard to do on other build systems,...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Live code updates and renderings of app

•••
Layouts are built and can be observed in real time and are automatically updated after every change. You can even see these changes on different screens.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Can test Google Play Services API straight from the emulator

•••
Since the built-in emulator has Google Play Services like a physical device, you can test a lot of API calls without having to deploy your application to a device.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Pushes fast to the built-in emulator

•••
Pushing to the built-in Android emulator can be up to 10 times faster than pushing to a physical device.
Goldie Lin
Top Pro

Based on the powerful IntelliJ IDEA

•••
Unlike it's predecessor, which is based off Eclipse, Android Studio is build on top of Jetbrain's Flagship Java IDE which offers over a number of features. It's also open-source too (Community Edition only).
Goldie Lin
Top Pro

Allows GPU tracking

•••
For graphics-intensive apps or games, Android Studio has a GPU profiler baked in. With this you can see exactly what is happening inside the device when a new image is drawn on the screen.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Extremely fast preview

•••
Since Android 2.0, Google have been focusing more and more on the IDE's speed, going so far as making it 2-2.5 times faster than older versions. But the greatest feature when it comes to speed though is the new feature called "Instant Run". This is comparable to writing HTML, where y...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Intelligently replaces values

•••
References are automatically replaced with their real values, so you can easily view which color you are using for example.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Android development only

•••
Android Studio is the official IDE for Android and it works great as an Android IDE. Unfortunately, that's the only thing it can do, if you want to develop applications for other platforms in Java, you have to learn another IDE as well.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Apps run slow on the ARM version of the emulator

•••
While the Android team have recently fixed issues that had to do with emulation on an x86 architecture and greatly improving emulator speeds, emulating an Android device and running apps on an ARM architecture is still pretty slow.
See 10 more Pros & ConsSee 10 more Pros & Cons

IntelliJ IDEA

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Clear and detailed documentation

•••
The documentation is exhaustive, easy to navigate and clearly worded.
Endi Sukaj
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.
Endi Sukaj
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.
Endi Sukaj
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.
Endi Sukaj
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.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Intuitive and slick UI

•••
IDEA has a clean, intuitive interface with some customization available (such as the Darcula theme).
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Stable and robust

•••
If any file was corrupted by the IDE you don't have to restart your project.
Endi Sukaj
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.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Somewhat expensive

•••
IntelliJ IDEA is fairly expensive, with a pricetag of $149/year. However there is a free community edition available.
See 7 more ProsSee 7 more Pros

Eclipse + Android Development Tools plugin

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Good font rendering

•••
Because Eclipse is based on SWT, it uses the native font rendering and thus looks better than other IDEs on some Linux systems, where the Java font rendering is not optimal.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Highly customizable

•••
Thanks to the large variety of plugins and various configuration options, Eclipse is very customizable.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Java programming language and XML editors

•••
Has full support for both Java and XML.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Large selection of plugins 

•••
Eclipse has a large and active community, which has resulted in a wide variety of plugins.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Free and open source

•••
Eclipse is a free and open source software, it's released under the Eclipse Public license.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

May lose support in the future

•••
Google recommends moving away from Eclipse for Android Development, plugins and features are adopted much later from Eclipse than from Android Studio or IntelliJ IDEA and in the future the ADT plugin may be abandoned altogether.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Plugins can be unstable

•••
Though there are plenty of plugins to choose from, they aren't always reliable. Some aren't maintained, bug fixes can be slow, and you may need to download plugins from multiple sources.
EnproGames
Top Con

Ugly Interface

•••
Eclipse has an unattractive interface, and has no easy way to use themes.
See 6 more Pros & ConsSee 6 more Pros & Cons

20 Community Recommendations

iboyperson
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EnproGames
Goldie Lin
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iboyperson
iboyperson
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Android Studio
Recommended 3 months ago
Andoid Studio is an enhanced version of IntelliJ and is officially supported by google
Pro
 Live code updates and renderings of app
Pro
 Uses the powerful Gradle build tool out of the box
Pro
 Intelligently replaces values
Pro
 Officially supported by Google
Pro
 Extremely easy to integrate Google Services
Pro
 Extremely fast preview
Pro
 Can test Google Play Services API straight from the emulator
Pro
 Pushes fast to the built-in emulator
Pro
 Allows GPU tracking
Pro
 Based on the powerful IntelliJ IDEA
See full
Currently displaying 1 out of 20 total recommendations.
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