The official Android programming IDE now has a new stable version available: Android Studio Arctic Fox 2020.3.1. Although the previous version was Android Studio 4.2, Google has decided to change the numbering to be more equivalent to the version of InteliJ, on which it is based.
As usual, Android Studio comes with a good number of new features, possibly the most important being Jetpack Compose 1.0, which has gained a lot of functionality. New templates and very useful improvements are also added to the Task and Database inspector.
Jetpack Compose 1.0 support
Jetpack Compose is the toolkit for creating user interfaces in a modern and fast way. Has reached the version 1.0 stable, accessible from Android Studio Artif FOX 2020.3.1 and with a good amount of news on its own part.
Jetpack Compose 1.0 adds a preview view, a deployment preview view, and support for Compose in the Layouts inspector Android Studio, among other changes.
New template responsive
This version of Android Studio includes a new template when starting a new project. Template responsive fluidly adapts to all sizes and situations: phones, folding, tablets or split screen.
The unit tests use gradle
To improve consistency in test executions, Android Studio use Gradle to run all unit tests by default, transparent to the user. Of course, the Android JUnit configurations are no longer recognized, which must be migrated to use as Gradle execution configurations.
New Background Task Inspector
If your project uses the WorkManager 2.5.0 library or higher, you can use the new tool Background Task Inspector to monitor everything that happens in the background in your application and the status of the different Workers.
Export data from the Database Inspector
The Android Studio database inspector gains an interesting novelty: you can save and share data from your application databases. It is now possible to export entire databases, tables and queries in DB, SQL or CSV format.
Test improvements on multiple devices at the same time
Now they can pass instrumentation tests on several devices at the same time in parallel, and investigate the results of each of the tests on each of the devices in the results panel. In this panel you can know if the test has failed at the API level or by the hardware of each device.
New wizard to pair Wear OS
Android Studio Artic Fox 2020.3.1 includes a new step-by-step wizard for pair a Wear OS emulator with a mobile either real or virtual. The wizard guides you to install the Wear OS application on your mobile and establish the connection between the two.
Other changes
Android Gradle Plugin 7.0. After the renumbering in the Gradle plugin, from version 4.2 we went directly to version 7.0.
New interface for Memory Profiler. The Android Studio memory profiler receives a new interface for different recording activities, such as capturing a stack dump and recording native, Java, and Kotlin memory allocations.
Support for StateFlow in data binding. Kotlin applications that use coroutines can use StateFlow objects as a data binding source to automatically notify the UI of data changes.
Import suggestions improvements. The number of libraries that are supported by the import suggestion has been improved, and the list of these libraries is updated more frequently.
AGP Update Wizard Enhancements. The Gradle Plugin Update Wizard now has its own window where the list of steps to be carried out is indicated.
Refactoring for non-transitive R classes. A new refactoring tool is added in You can Refactor> Migrate to Non-transitive R Classes.
Deploy to device. New tool to display a snippet of the interface to a device, without having to send the complete application.
Being an official update of Android Studio, you will be shown the new version notice automatically or through the menu Help> Check for updates. Also, you can download Android Studio Artic Fox 2020.3.1 from its official website.