Android Studio Installation — Setup Guide for Windows, macOS & Linux

Earlier I used to develop android applications using Eclipse IDE. Recently Google has released their own android IDE called as Android Studio. This is now the official Android IDE. So I installed Android Studio and thought of recording and sharing the steps. Here we go.

Table of Contents

• Why Android Studio
• More about the Studio
• System Requirements
• Windows
• Mac OS X
• Linux
• Installing Android Studio
• General notes before setup
• To set up Android Studio on Windows
• To set up Android Studio on Mac OSX
• To set up Android Studio on Linux
• Troubleshooting and notes
• Reference

Why Android Studio

At the core of Android Studio is an intelligent code editor capable of advanced code completion, refactoring, and code analysis. The powerful code editor helps you be a more productive Android app developer.

1. Intelligent code editor

2. Code templates and GitHub integration

New project wizards make it easier than ever to start a new project. Start projects using template code for patterns such as navigation drawer and view pagers, and even import Google code samples from GitHub.

3. Multi-screen app development

Build apps for Android phones, tablets, Android Wear, Android TV, Android Auto and Google Glass. With the new Android Project View and module support in Android Studio, it's easier to manage app projects and resources.

4. Virtual devices for all shapes and sizes

Android Studio comes pre-configured with an optimized emulator image. The updated and streamlined Virtual Device Manager provides pre-defined device profiles for common Android devices.

5. Android builds evolved, with Gradle

Create multiple APKs for your Android app with different features using the same project. Manage app dependencies with Maven. Build APKs from Android Studio or the command line.

More About the Studio

• Built on IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition, the popular Java IDE by JetBrains.
• Flexible Gradle-based build system.
• Build variants and multiple APK generation.
• Expanded template support for Google Services and various device types.
• Rich layout editor with support for theme editing.
• Lint tools to catch performance, usability, version compatibility, and other problems.
• ProGuard and app-signing capabilities.
• Built-in support for Google Cloud Platform, making it easy to integrate Google Cloud Messaging and App Engine.

System Requirements

Windows

• Microsoft® Windows® 8/7/Vista (32 or 64-bit)
• 2 GB RAM minimum, 4 GB RAM recommended
• 400 MB hard disk space
• At least 1 GB for Android SDK, emulator system images, and caches
• 1280 x 800 minimum screen resolution
• Java Development Kit (JDK) 7
• Optional for accelerated emulator: Intel® processor with support for Intel® VT-x, Intel® EM64T (Intel® 64), and Execute Disable (XD) Bit functionality

Mac OS X

• Mac® OS X® 10.8.5 or higher, up to 10.9 (Mavericks)
• 2 GB RAM minimum, 4 GB RAM recommended
• 400 MB hard disk space
• At least 1 GB for Android SDK, emulator system images, and caches
• 1280 x 800 minimum screen resolution
• Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6
• Java Development Kit (JDK) 7
• Optional for accelerated emulator: Intel® processor with support for Intel® VT-x, Intel® EM64T (Intel® 64), and Execute Disable (XD) Bit functionality

On Mac OS, run Android Studio with Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 for optimized font rendering. You can then configure your project to use Java Development Kit (JDK) 6 or JDK 7.

Linux

• GNOME or KDE desktop
• GNU C Library (glibc) 2.15 or later
• 2 GB RAM minimum, 4 GB RAM recommended
• 400 MB hard disk space
• At least 1 GB for Android SDK, emulator system images, and caches
• 1280 x 800 minimum screen resolution
• Oracle® Java Development Kit (JDK) 7

Installing Android Studio

Android Studio provides everything you need to start developing apps for Android, including the Android Studio IDE and the Android SDK tools. If you didn't download Android Studio, go download Android Studio now, or switch to the stand-alone SDK Tools install.

Before you set up Android Studio, be sure you have installed JDK 6 or higher (the JRE alone is not sufficient)—JDK 7 is required when developing for Android 5.0 and higher. To check if you have JDK installed (and which version), open a terminal and type:

javac -version

If the JDK is not available or the version is lower than version 6, download the Java SE Development Kit 7: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk7-downloads-1880260.html

General notes before setup

• Android Studio provides the IDE and manages SDK packages. Individual tools and other SDK packages are saved outside the Android Studio application directory (for example, \Users\\sdk\ on Windows or /Users//Library/Android/sdk/ on macOS).
• If your launcher script does not find Java on Windows, set the JAVAHOME environment variable to point to your JDK installation (for example C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.021).

To set up Android Studio on Windows:

1. Launch the .exe file you just downloaded.
2. Follow the setup wizard to install Android Studio and any necessary SDK tools. I have installed it on Windows 10. Here are the steps as below:

Once you launched Android Studio, it's time to mention JDK path in android studio installer.

Below the image initiating JDK to android SDK:

On some Windows systems, the launcher script does not find where Java is installed. If you encounter this problem, you need to set an environment variable indicating the correct location.

Select Start menu > Computer > System Properties > Advanced System Properties. Then open Advanced tab > Environment Variables and add a new system variable JAVAHOME that points to your JDK folder, for example C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.021.

The individual tools and other SDK packages are saved outside the Android Studio application directory. If you need to access the tools directly, use a terminal to navigate to the location where they are installed. For example:

\Users\<user>\sdk\

Need to check the components, which are required to create applications; below the image has selected Android Studio, Android SDK, Android Virtual Machine and performance (Intel chip).

Need to specify the location of local machine path for Android studio and Android SDK, below the image has taken default location.

Specify the RAM for Android emulator (by default it takes 512MB of local machine RAM).

At final stage, it would extract SDK packages into our local machine; it would take a while to finish the task.

After done all above steps perfectly, you must get finish button and it gonna be open android studio project with Welcome to android studio message as shown below:

You can start your application development by calling start a new android studio project. In a new installation frame it will ask Application name, package information and location of the project.

To set up Android Studio on Mac OSX:

1. Launch the .dmg file you just downloaded.
2. Drag and drop Android Studio into the Applications folder.
3. Open Android Studio and follow the setup wizard to install any necessary SDK tools.

If you need to use the Android SDK tools from a command line, you can access them at:

/Users/<user>/Library/Android/sdk/

To set up Android Studio on Linux:

1. Unpack the downloaded ZIP file into an appropriate location for your applications.
2. To launch Android Studio, navigate to the android-studio/bin/ directory in a terminal and execute studio.sh.

You may want to add android-studio/bin/ to your PATH environmental variable so that you can start Android Studio from any directory.

3. If the SDK is not already installed, follow the setup wizard to install the SDK and any necessary SDK tools.

Note: You may also need to install the ia32-libs, lib32ncurses5-dev, and lib32stdc++6 packages. These packages are required to support 32-bit apps on a 64-bit machine.

Troubleshooting and notes

• If the launcher script does not find Java on Windows: set the system-level JAVA_HOME environment variable pointing to your JDK.
• Emulator acceleration: to get best performance install Intel HAXM on Intel machines or use the platform hypervisor supported by your OS. (Follow official docs for current steps.)
• SDK path: the SDK is installed outside Android Studio; note the path when you accept defaults.

Reference

Reference: developer.android.com