Google on Tuesday announced an extension to Android Jetpack, a collection of Android software components that helps developers follow best practices, frees them from writing boilerplate code, and simplifies complex tasks. The Toolkit extension includes six new Jetpack libraries. Google is also bringing five libraries to test.
The expansion, along with a number of other announcements about Android development, came at Google I/O, the annual developer conference held in Google's hometown of Mountain View, Calif. Thomas Kurian, the new CEO of Google Cloud, paved the way for the development.
“There’s never been a better time to be a developer,” Kurian said, announcing new user interfaces, including voice and camera, cloud computing, and Google Assistant’s AI functionality.
Jetpack, announced last year, is already used by more than 80% of the top 1,000 Android apps. Some of Jetpack’s new libraries include CameraX, an open-source library that will make it easier to deploy the camera on a range of unique Android devices. Another new library is Jetpack Compose, which combines a programming model with Kotlin to simplify UI development.
Google also announced ways it is encouraging Android developers to use the rapidly growing Kotlin programming language. More than 50% of professional Android developers are already using it, just two years after Google announced that Kotlin was a supported language for Android.
Many new Jetpack APIs and features will be offered in Kotlin first, Google said. In addition, Google is working with Jetbrains and the Kotlin Foundation to offer more tools, documentation, training programs, and events for developers to use, including a new global event series called Kotlin/Everywhere.
Google also announced the release of Android Studio 3.5 in beta. It includes better IDE memory management for large projects, lower latency when typing, CPU usage optimizations, layout processor improvements, emulator improvements, and build changes, among other updates.
