Developing for Android can be done with any editor and the Android SDK tools but its much easier if you use the IntelliJ based IDEA Editor available for Mac, Windows and Linux called “Android Studio”.

Android Studio

On Apple Mac Android Studio comes as a bundle that includes all of the Java and Kotlin development toolchain - compilers and so on - and all of the Android SDK tools plus the Android Emulators that will allow you to develop for mobile while on your desktop computer.

There is a lot of setup - some of which can be deferred - but its best to get it all done up front so you don’t break your stride with long downloads while learning.

These very paint-by-numbers Google Slide sets step through each part of getting the Android Studio set up - latest version as of writing which is 3.5 - follow these to avoid gotcha’s. The HAXM installer is one such gotcha - mis-clicking can wind you up with a non-installed buggy & slow emulator!

The final steps - the preferences and checking your setup is right - are a bit more up to your personal preference. Try it the way shown in the slides first and if you don’t like it feel free to change it.

Terminal

If you have never used the terminal its strongly encouraged to get it set up now so that you can use when needed. Make sure its in your task bar, and practice navigating to it with your short-cut keys. Run it by pressing ⌘-space and typing “Terminal”.

On the Mac dock at the bottom of the screen, right click the Terminal (which is now running) and select Options > Keep in Dock.

Android includes a list of critical command line tools most of which can also be used from the IDE, but often when searching for solutions online you’ll find those command line tools are quoted as the best solution.

In Android there’s often times when you need to do things with Gradle (Android’s dependency manager) that cannot be done from inside the IDE. Also many useful commands involve running Android’s “adb” tool for managing devices connected during development.

The standard Mac terminal is fine, or you can setup your own fav such as ITerm.

Bashrc

If you’re a seasoned terminal user just add the below to your bashrc.

For those who’ve never really modified .bashrc or .bash_profile files before just create two files on your desktop named:

  • bashrc.txt
  • bash_profile.txt

…put the following in there.

  • bash_profile
source ~/.bashrc

# Have an ls that is in color by default
alias ls='ls -G '

# Android
export ANDROID_HOME="$HOME/Library/Android/sdk"
export PATH="$PATH:${ANDROID_HOME}/platform-tools:${ANDROID_HOME}/tools"

# Java from Android SDK
export JAVA_HOME="/Applications/Android Studio.app/Contents/jre/jdk/Contents/Home"
export PATH="${JAVA_HOME}/bin:${PATH}"
  • bashrc
export PS1="\[\033[1;34m\]\w $\[\033[0m\] "
export PS2="> "

If you created these on your desktop, now copy them into place using the following Terminal commands:

# Backup your existing bashrc & bash_profile
cp ~/.bashrc ~/bashrc.bak && cp ~/.bash_profile ~/bash_profile.bak

# Move the new bashrc and bash profile into place
mv -f ~/Desktop/bashrc.txt ~/.bashrc && mv -f ~/Desktop/bash_profile.txt ~/.bash_profile

Close your terminal & re-open it. Now those Android paths are available. But…

The adb and other android commands won’t be available until after the first run of the Android Studio project and we’ll revisit to check.

Bookmarks

As you develop for Android you’ll acquire a huge list of reference bookmarks - its good to start now by adding these go-to references to your bookmarks bar on your favourite browser. Build on these as you go through the course.

Some useful URL’s are also in the navigation panel left of the pages on this site.

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