Android Studio Installation

Step 1 - System Requirements

You can start Android application development on the following operating systems:

Microsoft® Windows® 8/7/Vista/2003 (32-bit or 64-bit).
Mac® OS X® 10.8.5 or higher
GNOME or KDE desktop

All of the tools required to develop Android applications are open source and can be downloaded from the Internet. The following is a list of software needed before starting Android application programming:

Java JDK 5 and later versions
Java Runtime Environment 6
Android Studio

Step 2 - Installing Android Studio

Overview

Android Studio is the official IDE for developing Android applications, based on IntelliJ IDEA. You can download the latest version from the official websiteAndroid Studio DownloadDownload the latest version of Android Studio.

If you want to install Android Studio on Mac or Linux, you canAndroid Studio Mac DownloadorAndroid Studio Linux Downloadto download the latest version and view the instructions provided with the downloaded file. This tutorial assumes you are installing your environment on the Windows 8.1 operating system.

Installation

Make sure that Java JDK is installed before installing Android Studio. For installing Java JDK, please seeJava Development Environment Setup |section.

Once you start the Android Studio installation, you need to set the JDK 5 or later version path in the Android Studio installer.

The following image shows the Android SDK initializing the JDK.

Check the components required to create applications. The figure below selects "Android Studio", "Android SDK", "Android Virtual Machine", and "Appearance (Intel chip)".

You need to specify the paths of Android Studio and Android SDK on your machine. The figure below shows the default installation locations on a Windows 8.1 64-bit architecture.

Specify the default RAM space of 512M required for the Android emulator.

Finally, unpack the SDK package to the local machine. This will take some time and occupy 2626M of hard disk space.

After completing the above steps, you will see the Finish button and can open Android Studio projects on the welcome screen, as shown below:

Start Android application development by launching a new Android Studio project. On the new installation page, you are required to fill in the application name, package name information, and project path.

After entering the application name, start selecting the environment parameters for running the application. Here you need to specify the minimum SDK. In this tutorial, we choose API 21: Android 5.0 (Lollipop).

android_android_studio_10

The next step in the installation requires selecting the activity for mobile devices and specifying a default layout for the application.

android_android_studio_11

In the final stage, open the development tools to write application code.

android_android_studio_12

Step 3 - Creating an Android Virtual Device

To test Android applications, you need an Android Virtual Device. Therefore, before writing code, let's create an Android Virtual Device. Click the AVD Manager icon in the image below to launch the Android AVD Manager.

android_android_studio_13

After clicking the virtual device icon, the default virtual devices already in the SDK will be displayed. Click the "Create new Virtual device" button to create a virtual device.

android_android_studio_14

If the AVD is created successfully, it means you are ready for Android application development. Click the close button in the upper-right corner to close the window. After completing the last step, finally restart your machine. Before starting the first Android example, you need to understand some concepts related to Android application development.

Hello World Example

Before writing the Hello World code, we need to know XML tags. Follow app > res > layout > activity_main.xml to open the file.

android_android_studio_15

The specific code is as follows:

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
   xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:layout_width="match_parent"
   android:layout_height="match_parent" android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
   android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
   android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
   android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin" tools:context=".MainActivity">

   <TextView android:text="@string/hello_world"
      android:layout_width="550dp"
      android:layout_height="wrap_content" />
</RelativeLayout>

Click Run > Run App to run the program; the result is as follows:

Other Extensions