How to become more productive in android with android studio plugins
Android studio is a very robust tool. It has the simplest and yet the most flexible interface to design UI for all types of devices. We can drag and drop views and widgets in our layout editor and customise it to the minor details with few xml lines. It has the best in the industry tools for code editing, debugging and performance profiling all at the cost of zero. But we still want more of it to be more productive in our daily exercise.
What makes us productive?
- To be able to write more lines with few keys.
- To be able to debug and profile your code quicker.
In my opinion, to understand your IDE better can make you more productive. It has so much to offer which we may haven’t explored.
To see what else android studio has in his pocket. Let’s dive into plugins. Plugins extends the project capabilities and enrich developing experience. Best part about plugins is how easy it is to install. Go to Preferences -> Plugins in Mac and browse plugins from one of the below option.
Latest plugin
1- Flutter
I just added Flutter an exciting new plugin to build and deploy cross-platform, high-performance mobile apps on both Android and iOS in our Android Plugins list. It’s awesome every android developer should try it.
Code generators
1- MVP generator
Install this plugin and generate your MVP android code. Press (⌘+N) key and select GenerateMVP. There are several MVP-plugins available better to experiment with them to pick your need. Keep in mind some of these auto generated code may add code for libraries like Dagger or RxJava so add there respective dependencies in gradle files.
2- Parcelable generator
Parcelable is android implementation of java Serializable. It’s used for passing data between android components with processing time faster than java Serializable. You can install this plugin, then press (⌘+N) to open popup to generate code, where you can select Parcelable. It also allows you to select which fields to be parceled.
3- DTOnator
All android applications use JSON for communication. JSON is light-weight and preferred data exchange format on mobile devices. We create POJO from JSONs. This plugin embeds POJO creation in android IDE. I find this plugin very useful.
4- ButterKnifeZelezny
Android Studio plug-in for generating ButterKnife injections from selected layout XML.
5- Android Selectors Generate
This Android Studio plugin automatically generates drawable selectors from appropriately named Android resources.
UI Plugins
1- Material Theme UI EAP
Android studio has two theme available Default and Dracula. If you want to use material theme there you go.
2- CodeGlance
Embeds a code minimap similar to the one found in Sublime into the editor pane. Works with both light and dark themes using your customized colors for syntax highlighting.
3- Advanced Java Folding
Folding options increases readability of code by hiding less important code constructs. Java has introduced lambda expressions in Java 8 which also makes code concise and clear.
4- Android DPI Calculator
DPI calculator allows you to calculate different sizes in all available default densities on Android platform, i.e.: xxxhdpi, xxhdpi, xhdpi, hdpi, mdpi, ldpi and tvdpi.
Debugging
1-JVM Debugger Memory view
I recently learned about this plugin it’s very handy and useful for every application. If you have memory concerns in your app or want to check object allocation at break points install this. There is already a nice article on this topic worth looking for.
2-JRebel for Android
This plugin works similar to Google’s Instant run feature in android studio. To save installation and build time, they use hot, warm and cold swapping of code and resources which is basically only applying patches for new changes rather than reinstalling complete APK.
3-Android Resource Usage Count
This plugin automatically counts resource usage and shows it in the left strip of each line in your android studio. Very handy if you want to get rid of resources not being used in your project anymore.
Utilities
1-BIU
Biu is a convienient plugin to compress your PNGs one by one or all selected ones. It’s powered by the well known pngquant library and API from tinypng.
Note : If you have android minsdkversion ≥ 18 you can also convert your images to WebP format by right clicking on one or all selected images together to attain max compression and reduce APK size.
2-Folding Plugin
This plugin is very helpful in Android Development. It can display your files as a group of different folders in project structure view. Best thing about this plugin it doesn’t creates folder or moves files.
3-GitIgnore
You can’t possibly ignore this one. Because it ignores all the build files, auto generated files, IDE cache etc. for you.
4-AndroidLocalizationer
This one helps you translate your strings resources to other languages. Install it and then right click string resource file and select ‘Convert to other languages’ and choose which languages you want.
5-Android Wifi ADB
Android wifi ADB helps you install, run and debug android APKs over wifi. Time to get rid of carrying USB cable.
For more awesome and useful plugins check this project.
Happy coding :)
