Google LLC today announced a number of new tools for Android developers at Android Dev Summit 2019, including Jetpack Compose, a declarative native app tool, an expanded application programmer interface and Android Studio 4.0 features.

“You’ve told us: you love our openness… but you’d also love us to marry it with an opinion about the right way to do things, to make sure the right way is also the easiest way, so we’ve been making deep investments to make sure the best way is also the easiest way, evolving the overall experience,” said Stephanie Cuthbertson, Android’s director of product management.

Cuthbertson calls this “modern Android development,” which comes across as “opinionated and powerful, with a more complete platform, helping you focus on what you do best: building amazing experiences.”

To start, the Android team is expanding its commitment to Kotlin, Java and C++. The team calls these the “first-class” languages. Java and C++ are already well-known in the community as standard languages, and Kotlin is a cross-platform Java alternative, developed by Jetbrains s.r.o., that’s interoperable with Java.

The team will be working with JetBrains to make Kotlin better than before. That includes faster compile speeds, incremental annotation processing with the KAPT plugin, less integrated development environment typing latency, more initialization checks and new optimizations that are aware of Kotlin-specific bytecode patterns.

According to the team, makers of nearly 60% of the top 1,000 apps have already discovered how easy Kotlin is to use. Thanks to the fact that Kotlin is fully interoperable with Java, nothing stops developers from beginning to insert Kotlin code into their Java apps.

Google also announced the company’s Android Developer Certification in Kotlin. As part of the launch special, this certification will be available for a limited time for only $99 – down from $149 – when using the code ADCERT99.

As for Jetpack, it’s getting some upgrades. First announced during Google I/O, the Jetpack benchmarking tool is now available as a release candidate. Using this library with code will make it easier to record and analyzer performance from an app.

With Viewbinding, developers will find it easier to access Views from the code, which is how information is published visibly to widgets on a mobile screen. This provides a type-safe solution that has a minimal impact on build time, so it won’t slow developers down.

Google also said that many devices in the Android ecosystem are unifying behind CameraX, an addition to Jetpack that makes it easier to add camera capabilities to an app. Device makers using CameraX include Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Xiaomi Corp., Oppo, Motorola Inc. and LG Electronics Inc. This capability was previewed during Google I/O and it will become available in beta during December.

Today, Google also announced that Jetpack Compose has come to Developer Preview. Compose is a development tool that makes it easier to build native apps. It provides a declarative method for building user interfaces in a way that feels more intuitive. The tool, inspired by Kotlin, is seamlessly compatible with the existing UI toolkit and therefore developers can approach it at whatever pace they choose.

To get access to Jetpack Compose, developers need only download the most recent Canary build of Android Studio. Compose is being developed completely in the open and has been extremely sensitive to developer feedback. Much of that feedback has been used to create API improvements.

Jetpack Compose is expected to come to beta test mode next year, ready for use with production apps.

The first Canary channel build of Android Studio 4.0 has also been released. In addition to the preview of Compose tooling – such as live preview, code completion and a full sampling of Compose apps — this build also includes a Java 8 library with full support for KTS files and Kotlin live templates.

Image: Google