Google LLC today launched the alpha release of Jetpack Compose, a development tool it has built to speed up the creation of Android apps.

The search giant debuted an early preview version of Jetpack Compose last October. It’s aimed at speeding up Android development by streamlining the process of creating an app’s user interface, a time-consuming task that historically required writing a lot of custom code.

Android developers have traditionally had to write UI elements with the XML markup language. The use of XML adds complexity to projects because an Android app’s core features have to be written in an altogether different language, with one of the consequences being that developers have to write a great deal of so-called boilerplate code. Jetpack Compose reduces the amount of boilerplate code required for an app by removing the need to use XML, instead allowing developers to write both an app’s core features and UI in a single language. 

That language is Kotlin, which Google last year named as the preferred programming technology for Android.

Jetpack Compose also eases UI development in other ways, for instance by reducing how much code developers must write to handle interface changes. If a user of an e-commerce app takes out an item from their shopping cart, the app needs to refresh to reflect that change. Interface elements written in Jetpack Compose can apply such updates with considerably less code than XML-based implementations.

The tool’s upgrade to alpha status today was accompanied by the introduction of several new enhancements. Many of them are intended to jumpstart adoption of Jetpack Compose in the development community by making it more accessible. 

The first way Google hopes to boost adoption is by making it easier for developers to use the tool with existing Android apps. According to the search giant, interface elements created with the tool can now be embedded into an Android app originally created with XML. For Google, that’s an important step toward getting Jetpack Compose adopted in the most popular apps on the Play Store, most of which weren’t originally created with the tool.

The search giant is also integrating Jetpack Compose more deeply into Android Studio, the desktop-based toolkit Android developers use to build apps. A programmer can now write the code for an interface element in Android Studio’s editor and view an interactive preview of the element in an adjacent tab. The preview automatically refreshes when the underlying code changes.

Internally created UI development tools such as Jetpack Compose and Flutter, which Google also upgraded recently, are a big part of the search giant’s developer strategy. The easier the company makes it to build Android apps, the faster developers can bring new ideas to market.  

Images: Google