Additionally, in comparison to Proguard, R8 combines shrinking, desugaring and dexing operations into one step, which ends up to be a more efficient approach for Android apps. R8 code shrinking helps reduce the size of your APK by getting rid of unused code and resources as well as making your actual code take less space. R8 by Default - Almost two years ago we previewed R8 as the replacement for Proguard.Additionally, the new PSD displays build variables, suggestions to improve your build file configuration, and more! Although the latest Gradle plugin v3.4 also has improvements, you do not have to upgrade your Gradle plugin version number to take advantage of the new PSD. The new PSD allows you to see and add dependencies to your project at a module level. We have more plans for this area, but Android Studio 3.4 includes the next phase of improvement in the Product Structure Dialog (PSD). Project Structure Dialog - A long standing request from many developers is to have a user interface front end to manage Gradle project files.This update has a wide range of improvements from support for multi-line TODOs to an updated search everywhere feature. IntelliJ Platform Update - Android Studio 3.4 includes Intellij 2018.3.4.Additionally, errors and warnings have their own highlight color, we have a resource binding control for each property, and we have an updated color picker. Now we just have one single pane, with collapsible sections for properties. Layout Editor Properties Panel - To improve product refinement and polish we refreshed the Layout Editor Properties panel.Moreover, since Jetpack libraries are modularized, Android Studio can find the exact library or minimum set of libraries required to use a new Jetpack class. This optimization can be a time saver since it keeps you in the context of your code.
Import Intentions - As you work with new Jetpack and Firebase libraries, Android Studio 3.4 will recognize common classes in these libraries and suggest, via code intentions, adding the required import statement and library dependency to your Gradle project files.These accelerators will hopefully help manage assets you get from a design team, or simply help you have a more organized view of project assets. In addition to visualization, the panel supports drag & drop bulk asset import, and, by popular request, bulk SVG to VectorDrawable conversion.
The resource manager is a new tool to visualize the drawables, colors, and layouts across your app project in a consolidated view.
Posted by Jamal Eason, Product Manager, AndroidĪfter nearly six months of development, Android Studio 3.4 is ready to download today on the stable release channel.