Book Image

Android Studio 4.2 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition

By : Neil Smyth
Book Image

Android Studio 4.2 Development Essentials - Kotlin Edition

By: Neil Smyth

Overview of this book

Android Studio is an Integrated Development Environment that is based on the JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA. It provides developers with a unique platform to design and develop Android apps using various developer tools. The new Android Studio 4.2 has an upgraded IntelliJ platform and a variety of new features designed to improve the productivity of Android app developers. Fully updated for Android Studio 4.2, the objective of this book is to help you master the skills necessary to develop Android applications using Kotlin as the programming language. This book begins by outlining the steps necessary to set up an Android development and testing environment and introduces programming in Kotlin, addressing data types, flow control, functions, lambdas, and object-oriented programming. It includes an overview of Android Studio, covering areas such as tool windows, the code editor, and the Layout Editor tool. An introduction to Android architecture is followed by an in-depth explanation of the design of Android applications and user interfaces using the Android Studio environment. Early chapters detail Android Architecture components like view models, lifecycle management, Room database access, the Database Inspector, app navigation, live data, and data binding. Advanced topics such as intents are also covered, as are touch screen handling, gesture recognition, and the recording and playback of audio. You will also explore printing, transitions, cloud-based file storage, and foldable device support. Detailed descriptions of material design concepts are provided, including the use of floating action buttons, Snackbars, tabbed interfaces, card views, navigation drawers, and collapsing toolbars. Some key features of Android Studio 4.2 and Android discussed in-depth include the Layout Editor, the ConstraintLayout and ConstraintSet classes, MotionLayout Editor, view binding, constraint chains, barriers, and direct reply notifications. Later chapters cover advanced features of Android Studio such as App links, Dynamic Delivery, the Android Studio Profiler, Gradle build configuration, and submitting apps to the Google Play Developer Console.
Table of Contents (94 chapters)
94
Index

4.8 Running the Emulator in a Tool Window

So far in this chapter we have only used the emulator as a standalone window. The emulator may also be run as a tool window embedded within the main Android Studio window. To embed the emulator, select the File -> Settings... menu option (Android Studio -> Preferences... on macOS), navigate to Tools -> Emulator in the left-hand navigation panel of the preferences dialog, and enable the Launch in a tool window option:

Figure 4-14

With the option enabled, click the Apply button followed by OK to commit the change, then exit the standalone emulator session.

Run the sample app once again, at which point the emulator will appear within the Android Studio window as shown in Figure 4-15:

Figure 4-15

To hide and show the emulator tool window, click on the Emulator tool window button (marked A above). Click on the “x” close button next to the tab (B) to exit the emulator. The emulator tool window can accommodate...