I have been using Android Studio for more than 4 years, and some of that I’m sharing is something I just realize as well. There are many gems in this IntelliJ IDE that would is really useful. I just share 5 below.

1. Show/Hide all windows, other than code editor

Sometimes we use our small little laptop to do coding. The real estate of the screen is really limited. Hence how nice if we could hide away all windows while coding and show them back with a simple shortcut…

Cheer up…

Use ⇧ ⌘ F12 to hide or show all Windows

2. Zoom in and out code in the Editor easily

If you see a picture, you probably would guess to zoom in to see the picture bigger or zoom out to see more of the picture, you could use the pinch/un-pinch gesture.

Little would one expect that we could do this on Android Studio’s Code Editor as well. Check it out below! This make modify editor to present code to a larger audience so much easier.

3. Multiple Copy-&-Paste List

Sometimes after we paste some code and perform another new copy, we say… Ops, I need to paste the previously copied item again. Grhhh 😡 …

Don’t be upset, when you perform copy in Android Studio, it is stored in a list, and you could access it later.

Use ⇧ ⌘ V to list all previously copied item (including those that that copy outside of Android Studio)

4. Comparing with Clipboard

When we have an original code, and want to modify it temporarily, then check what we modified with the original, we would think of using git to help to compare the change.

Do you know in Android Studio, it has a feature to allow you to compare your existing code with the latest copied item in clipboard?

Right click on the editor, and select `Compare with Clipboard`, would have your code diff with the copy content.

This is so neat, as you just copy what you want to compare to the clipboard, and use this feature. And nicer still in the comparison, you could modify your code still while comparing.

Check out the illustration below.

4. Syntax aware select

Whenever we select a piece of code, 99% of the time (if not 100%), we’ll select the entire word, code statement, function. In short we select code snippet that is meaningful. We would normally use mouse-click-&-drag or shift-arrowkey to manually select the part we want.

To make it more effective, in Android Studio, we now can…

Use ⌥ ⇡ to select based on syntax scope (and ⌥ ⇣ to unselect it)

It would smartly select the syntax from a variable name to expression and to its scope. Check out the illustration below