Google releases Android Studio 4

Google has released Android Studio 4 as a stable version. The software upgrade announced last year to create Android apps includes a Motion Editor for creating moving interface parts.

The Motion Editor relieves developers of the obligation to create XML files to capture movement of interface components in apps; Android Studio creates those files and developers can view and edit the code of those XML files with the push of a button.

There is also a Layout Validation option in version 4.0 to see how an app will look on various screen sizes and screen ratios. That’s important, now that apps have to be able to run on more and more different screen ratios.

The new version also includes Jetpack Compose. Jetpack Compose works with Kotlin APIs and is a toolkit to create an interface within Android Studio. In addition, developers see a live preview of changes in the image and the intention is that thanks to Jetpack Compose less code needs to be written to create an interface in an app. Google announced Android Studio 4.0 last year and has been testing the software ever since.