Since 2015, Android Studio has been Google's recommended program for creating Android apps. Android Studio is based heavily on JetBrains' IntelliJ, with slight changes. The main difference is that it ships with all the Android tools pre-installed.

While Android Studio an incredibly useful program, it can be frustrating to use at times. It can hog system resources, throw random errors, or fail to build for no reason at all. However, it seems like Google is finally ready to address these issues with the release of Android Studio 3.3 to the stable update channel. While this version does introduce a couple of new features, the focus is on bug fixes and stability improvements. Here are some of the changes:

  • Stable Navigation Editor
    • Android Studio's Navigation Editor feature is now stable. Read more
  • New IntelliJ base
    • Android Studio 3.3 is based on IntelliJ 2018.2.2, which adds features like Java 11 support. Read more
  • Safely delete old IDE directories
    • Android Studio will now suggest old configuration folders that can safely be deleted.
  • Improved Gradle features
    • Android Studio uses the Gradle build system's new task creation API, which allows it to only run the tasks required for the current build.
  • Faster snapshot saves for emulators
    • Emulators can save their current state when closed instead of shutting completely down. Version 3.3 has made the save time eight times faster compared to version 3.2.

Android Studio 3.3 also brings a new User Feedback feature. Wherever you are in the IDE, you can quickly share your experience. Google will receive your feedback, along with what you were doing, and use that to improve the program. This is part of Google's new Project Marble, which was introduced with the 3.3 beta back in November. It may sound fancy, but Project Marble is more of a promise than a project. Google has said that it wants to focus more on bugs and problems in Android Studio, and this is what they're calling that focus.

While it may not be some big new thing, it's good to see Google focusing on improving the experience for developers who use the program. Hopefully, Project Marble will keep giving us more fixes and improvements.

Source: Android Developers Blog