Android Studio 3.0 Release Candidate 2 Released

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Android Studio is the official IDE for Android development that all Android developers should be using. The application, based on IntelliJ IDEA, supports a wide range of Android-specific functions such as emulation, UI building, code samples, Google Cloud Platform support and more. It’s the perfect IDE for any kind of budding Android developer. Android Studio 3.0 has been in testing for months now, and finally, the second release candidate for Android Studio 3.0 has been released, meaning the full version launch should be imminent.

For starters, Android Studio 3.0 is based on IntelliJ’s version 2017.1 IDEA software. This is upgraded from version 2016.3, and so includes a lot of new features including parameter hints, semantic highlighting and instant results in search. It also will be launching with Kotlin, a relatively new, Google-backed programming language which can be used to make Android applications. It can also use Java 8, meaning developers can also disable Jack as Android Studio’s toolchain benefits more from using Java 8 now. You can also use greater profiling (to monitor your application running), develop Instant Apps, debug any APK, view your device file system, work with Android Oreo, make use of new templates for Android Things and many other new features.

If you want to give it a try, you can! It will run side by side with the stable version of Android Studio if you simply want to try it out, and you can uninstall it if you find any bugs or prefer the previous version. Projects work interchangeably between versions, so an Android Studio version 3.0 project will work on a 2.0 installation of the software and vice versa. If you’re interested in checking it out, follow the link down below to download and install it! It will install and initialize all of the files it needs, guiding you throughout the setup.