Android Studio Installation

Published in

MDG Space

6 min readJun 30, 2019

Why Develop For Android?

With over 1 billion Android devices already activated, Android represents an incredible opportunity for developers. Android Studio is a latest and most widely accepted IDE designed by Google itself. If you want to develop apps in android then it is highly recommended to use Android Studio.

Quick Overview

A typical native android application is written using XML for the frontend (the User Interface) and JAVA for the backend.

JAVA All the programming part in android development is done using JAVA. Although it’s a great advantage, if you know a thing or two about programming in Java, but even if you know any object oriented programming language, then it will not be much difficult to relate to the concepts used during development. In short if you know C++ or C then also you are at peace.

XML This is used to build the app’s user interface. All user interface elements in an Android app are built using View and ViewGroup objects. It has drag and drop User Interface

Running the app An android application can run either on your device or in the emulator that comes bundled with the SDK. Since the emulators can be slow, it is always recommended to use an actual device. This link contains the detailed explanation for setting up your device/emulator for testing.

Installation of Android Studio

JDK and JRE are essential for JAVA to run on your machine.

Installing JAVA

There is no need to install Java as latest Android Studio versions already come with JDK bundled with it. See here for more information.

Windows Users

(linux users click here)

Installing IDE

• Go to this link and select “Download Android Studio for Windows”.

• Check the “ I have read and agree with the above terms and conditions” box and Download Android Studio For Windows.

• Install studio after downloading. Keep on clicking next button and at last click finish.

• Android Studio will open up. A window similar to the below one would appear.

• Select Do not import settings since you don’t have any. Again keep on clicking next and at last finish. It will take some time for downloading files.

• There are still some dependencies left to install. These can be install by building your first project so head to recommended section for things you’ll need for this lecture.

Linux Users

Installing IDE

Get your Android Studio from here.
Click on the Download Android Studio button and accept the terms to get your download started.
Extract the file where you want to install Android Studio. Preferred installation location is the user’s home directory (~) or the opt directory (/opt).
In terminal type:

cd /{Location where you extracted}/android-studio/bin

and then

sh studio.sh

5. A dialog appears like the one below. Select do not import settings.

6. You will now see the Android Studio Setup wizard as shown below.

7. Keep on clicking next until you see a Dialog similar to one below. Click Finish.

8. Wait while Android Studio downloads necessary components. Click Finish.

9. The Android Studio window shall open. Click the option Create Desktop Entry from the Configure Menu to create shortcut to android studio in launcher. This avoids the need to open the terminal each time you want to launch the Studio.

Ensure an interent connection on your machine
Start Android Studio
Click Start a new Android Studio Project
On screen Configure you new project leave default options and click Next
Leave default options unchanged and click Next.
Select Empty Activity and click Next.
Leave default options unchanged and click Finish.
If Gradle build fails (check the status bar at the bottom) and Android Studio asks to download additional packages, allow it.
Keep repeating step 8 till you get a successful gradle build (status bar will say: Gradle build finished).
Keep this project open as you will run this test app on your phone later.

(Enable USB Debugging in your phone and run)

Follow this to enable USB debugging in your Android phone.

(Run the Test app on your phone)

After following the above two steps, it’s time to build and run your first test app (A HelloWorld app, if you will) on your phone.
Connect your phone to your PC via the usb cable.
Allow USB debugging if asked to in your Android device.
Now, open the empty Project we created before in Android Studio.
Click Run ‘app’ (Shift + F10) option in the Run menu.
A dialog should appear allowing you to select your device.