Learn some useful Android Studio tips to get your android development done faster and more efficiently on Windows.

Bring up the Logcat quickly

Need to quickly get some debug stats? Just press Alt + 6 — and Logcat will popup!

Getting Icon Drawables

To get an icon, whether for navigation or display, simply:

Right click the root file structure in Android Studio, “app” ➡ New ➡ Vector Asset

After that, you can search for what icon you want from the hundreds already available, adjust the size of each icon by hitting the “Override” checkbox, and even change its color and opacity

Zoom In/Out and Change Font Settings

Ctrl + scroll up or down with the mouse wheel will adjust the font size Android Studio displays for each individual file.

However, to change it for all files by default in Android Studio, go to:

File ➡ Settings ➡ Editor ➡ Font

Here, you can change the font, the font size as well as the line spacing.

Full Screen / Distraction Free Mode

If you feel you get distracted really easy — YouTube, Facebook, Steam, Twitter, we know! — you can go to

View ➡ Enter Distraction Free Mode

This will just get rid of the evil distracting side bar; however, to to get the full distraction-free Android Studio experience on Windows, combine this with Full Screen Mode to get the ultimate browsing experience.

What’s more, you can even go to Presentation Mode, with the previous options enabled, to have a fresh android development experience from time-to-time.

Get Last 5 Copy Pastes

It’s annoying isn’t it when you were going to paste something but then had to copy something else so you lost the original paste?

Well, if you hold down Ctrl + Shift + V on Windows, you can view up to 5 of your last copy and pastes. This neat Android Studio feature makes sure you don’t lose them again.

Extract String Resource

To automatically move hard-coded Strings to the strings values file:

Cursor on text ➡ Alt + Enter ➡ Extract String Resource ➡ OK

This will get rid of those meddling hard-coded String warnings and stow the strings away for you.

Well, those were some of the most helpful, yet not that commonly known, Android Studio tips on Windows that I had discovered while developing my apps.

If you feel that I have left out any important features, comment down below!

On the other hand, if you would like to hire an Android developer and would like to gain a greater insight into how you should test the developer’s knowledge, this great article by the developers at Toptal would give you immense knowledge on this subject.