Set up Android Studio

 

Hello Developers, before moving on the set up of android studio let's first understand why you need android studio to develop mobile apps. According to official documentation of android Android Studio provides a unified environment where you can build apps for Android phones, tablets, Android Wear, Android TV, and Android Auto. Structured code modules allow you to divide your project into units of functionality that you can independently build, test, and debug.

Install Android Studio

Ok so now, let's start the android journey. To develop an android app you have to first set up the official IDE android studio. Below, I have mentioned the steps to install Android Studio.

System Requirements

• Microsoft Windows 7/8/10 (32-bit or 64-bit).
• Minimum 4 GB RAM, 8 GB recommended.
• 2 GB minimum disk space, 4 GB recommended.
• 1280 X 800 minimum screen resolution.

Steps for Installing

1. Go to the developer android site to download the android-studio .exe file. Download here
2. Once the download is finished, open the .exe file and run it. It will open below the dialog box.
   
   
   
3. Click next & it will start installing. Once installed click next.
4. Click "Finish" on the dialog box. After clicking finish it will start the android studio.

Guide to creating a new project

1. When you open android studio for the first time, it will prompt the below screen.
   
   
   
2. Create the new project button & select your device (phone, tv, wear OS). Also, select the type of activity. Android provides various types of activities like Basic activity, Bottom navigation activity, Empty activity, etc. You can choose an activity based on your requirements. Here, I have chosen empty activity which is default & recommended.
   
   Click next.
3. Provide App name, Package name, Location to store the android app, Language to develop an app & Minimum SDK. Provided SDK will specify how many devices your app will run.  
   
   Click finish.
4. Your app is ready to be developed. Once the project will finish all the installation & build of the gradle file. you can make changes to your file.

Create Android Virtual Device

After creating your android app you can run it on either AVD(Android Virtual Device) or a physical device. In order to create AVD, you can follow the below steps:

1. Go to the device manager & click on create device.
   
   
   
2. This will prompt the below window. Here you can select your device according to your requirements. 

   

   Click next.
3. In this window, you can select the android version & SDK and download it. In a previous post, I mentioned android version names with SDK. You can refer to it & download the version. It will take few minutes. Here, I have selected 'R'.

   

       Click next.
4. Give AVD name & orientation. Then click finish.

      

Conclusion

In this post, I have provided the basic details of setting up an android studio & creating a project, AVD. In the next post, we will see the architecture of android & android activity lifecycle.