In this video I'm going to show you how to download and install Android Studio,
which is the program we're going to be using to write our Android applications
in this course. Just a reminder that this is the Windows video, so if you're
running a Mac or Linux machine, refer to a separate video in this section where you
can follow along for the installation instructions for those operating systems.
So moving forward, presuming you're on Windows. At this point, I'm going to
assume you're running a 64-bit version of Windows. There's a - swing over to this
link here on screen - and there's a link to this in the resources section of this
video. The 32-bit Android studio has been deprecated, meaning that it won't be
supported for much longer by Google. So this blog post - again you
can find the link to in the resources section - but it's not a bad thing because
using Android Studio on a 32-bit system wasn't a good experience. And that's
because 32-bit versions of Windows have limitations on the amount of RAM that
they can use. In fact only 3.5 gigabytes of RAM can be addressed by 32-bit
versions of Windows; and that's really going to make life hard for you as
an Android developer. Android Studio really needs more memory to operate
effectively. So to check if you're running a 64-bit or 32-bit version of
Windows, you just come down here to the search window, you can either type 32 or
type "about", and that will bring you to either about your PC or if you get this
opportunity and see if you have a 32 or 64-bit version they should both take you
to this about page, as you can see here. Then under device specifications you can
see it says system type. Now this says 64-bit operating system, and that means
you've got a 64-bit installation and you're good to go.
Otherwise it'll say 32-bit, and that would obviously mean you're running a
32-bit installation of Windows. Ignore the processor bit, on the right-hand
side, it's the Windows installation type that we're after. So if your screen looks
like this one, and says 64-bit, keep watching the video and follow along. But
if yours says 32-bit then you're probably going to have problems with this
course with that version of Windows. There is a version of Android studio
that I alluded to that you can install, for a 32-bit version Windows, but that's
again not going to be supported for much longer.
Good news is though that, unless you bought your computer a really long time
ago, the chances are pretty high that you've already got a 64-bit cpu
installed, even if you haven't necessarily got a 64-bit version of
Windows. So if you really want to get into Android development then I suggest
that you would install a 64-bit operating system. Now you'll probably have
to pay to upgrade windows to 64-bit, but another alternative you can also
consider is installing a Linux operating system - such as Ubuntu. And you can dual
boot that on your Windows machine. And that's a lot cheaper, and in fact it's
free. But obviously you need to invest some time in learning a new operating
system, in that scenario. So moving on now, I'm going to assume that you're
running a 64-bit version of Windows. The next thing I want to do is check the CPU.
So while we're on this screen, you can take a look at the processor, and note
that for me it says Intel but depending on your computer you may see Intel or
another option such as AMD. So if the processor is Intel, as mine is, then you're
good to go. However if the processor was AMD then there's another step to
perform. And things are slightly different because it's an AMD processor.
So in that scenario, if you do see AMD - if and only if - you want to come down to the
bottom of the screen down here. I'm going to type "turn windows" until we get this
option here to Turn Windows Features on or off. Or you may need to go into
control panel and find that. And again, if you're on an AMD processors only,
let's go down to the bottom here and we're looking for Windows Hypervisor
Platform. And you can see the check box is off for me, but what you'll need to do
if you're on an AMD is check that and click OK.
Obviously I'm not going to do that, because you can see that I'm running a
Intel CPU in my scenario. What will happen, when you do that and you're running an
AMD CPU, it'll adjust windows, change some settings, and probably require you to
reboot. So do that if you're on an AMD CPU, and then come back to this point in
the video and continue on as per normal. Alright, so in my case, again, I mentioned
that I'm on Intel so I'm going to cancel that, close down this, and
we're now what we're going to do is go back to the google search engine, and
we're going to install Android Studio. So first things first we want to find
it and then the easiest thing to do is just do a search for install android
studio. And you want to click the first developer.android.com link here
you can see that one says studio install which is correct. Come over here and click
on "Download the latest version of Android Studio" and this should give you
straight away the released latest version of Android studio. If there are
options to click over here where you can download other options, a 32-bit version
and so forth that we don't recommend, but we're not going to do any of that. I'm
gonna go back and obviously down here it tells us that it's the windows 64-bit.
I'm going to click on that, I'm gonna click on I've read and agree, click on
download Android studio for Windows. I'm just going to run that when it's
finished, so while that's downloading keep in mind that the 3.5 you see there
may be a higher number, when you come to download that. And the
reason for that is Google, who own the Android product, they release new
versions of Android Studio on a regular basis. So it's very hard, because they
release so many updates a year, to keep these installation videos updated. But
the good thing is that generally the installation is very similar to what
we'll go through in this video. So if you see a later version there, on the same
screen that I've got on now, then you can just proceed and download that
newer version, and you're good to go. Ok you can see we're just about done
here now. we'll let it run its security scan, and then it'll probably ask us to
update something. What I'm gonna do is just close down the browser, because we're
finished with it anyway, and you may or may not see this pop up on screen. But
it's asking is do we want to allow this app to make changes to your device. So
I'm going to select yes to that, and that will continue the installation. Click on
Next. We're going to make sure both these options are checked, the first one we can't
uncheck anyway. Make sure Android Virtual Device is checked, click on Next. We're
going to install to the default location, Next, and click on Install. We'll let that go
ahead and complete. Ok, that's now completed. We'll click on Next and we'll
click on Finish, noting the checkbox for Start Android Studio is checked - and
that's obviously going to do just that. You'll get this option if you haven't
installed Android studio on your computer before. It's giving us the
option to load the settings, or a configuration, from another
installation. We haven't got one, we're starting from fresh, so I'm just going to
click on OK. Next we've got a wizard that's popped up. I'm gonna click on Next
here, and we'll come over and click Custom. Next you got a choice of themes
here. I'm going to leave it on white as the white background, because that comes
up better in videos, but you might want to choose Darcula, which is usually, or
certainly something, that a lot of students would prefer. Because it's a
little bit easier on the eyes. So choose the one you like, click on Next. Here we
want to make sure that we've got everything checked. However there are
some notes to keep in mind, or things to keep in mind, about Intel HAXM. We
specifically do not want to install Intel HAXM if you're running an AMD CPU
or processor. Now the reason for that is that the HAXM, which is a product that
actually speeds up and come over here and check it; it tells the over there that
it enables a hardware-assisted virtualization engine - basically speeds
up the Android app emulation. Now that's been written by Intel, and what they've
done is specifically make it not work with non Intel CPUs. So therefore it
makes no sense to install it if you're on an AMD CPU - and in fact you'll get
errors. So make sure you deselect that if you are not on an Intel CPU, for that
reason. In my case, I am on an Intel CPU as we saw early in the video. I'm going to
check it, click on Next, and this will only pop up obviously if you selected to
check the box for HAXM. This is the amount of RAM in your computer you want
to dedicate to HAXM. again to speed up your Android app emulation. It's usually
okay to just leave the default - in my case it's suggesting two gigabytes of RAM.
As a general piece of advice, if you've got less than 8 gigabytes of RAM total
on your computer, do some research and see if your computer can be upgraded to
8 gigabytes or even better 16 gigabytes. Memory is relatively cheap, and it will
make a big difference in the performance of Android studio and the emulators etc.
But in terms of the RAM you've got on your computer now, if you've got 8 gigabytes or
more of RAM in your computer, leave it as the default that's been selected
automatically within by the Installer. But if you've got less than 8 gigabytes
then you'll need to allocate less to HAXM. Depending
on just how much memory you've got in your computer, you may need to reduce
that to one gigabyte or even 512 megabytes. So I'm going to go ahead and
continue the installation of HAXM because probably the majority of
Windows computers out there do have Intel CPUs, and obviously we established
earlier in the video that mine has. So I'm going to leave the defaults here, and
click on Next. Then we're going to click on Finish and we're going to see that
there's a download going to take place, so I'm just going to fast forward
this and we'll come back when it's reached the next step.
Okay so the installation's continued. You're now automatically being prompted to
allow this app to make changes to devices. And this is because I've
selected HAXM, so you may not see this. And if it comes up with a pop up, just click
on Yes to windows command processor and it's actually going now you can see down
the bottom it's running the Intel HAXM installer. And if you tried to do this on
an AMD machine with an AMD CPU, so there's a processor, you won't get an
error. I'm just going to pop up on the screen what that will look like.
You can see, in my case, it was successfully installed. Now there can be
reasons why the HAXM installation will fail, even if you are on an Intel CPU, and
usually it's got to do with a BIOS change on your computer that you need to
change. So if you do find that you're going to error similar to the one you
can see on screen now, and you have got an Intel CPU, then it might be worth
checking that VTX is enabled in your computer's BIOS. And there's a video in
this section of the course with the title "Enable VTX
in BIOS" which you can check out, which should give you the information you need
to make that change in your computer. But in my case you can see that I was
successful in installing HAXM, and in fact the Android installation, so I
can click on Finish. At this point we've done the basic installation of Android
Studio, so in the next video we're going to look at configuring Android Studio. So
do note that I've got a Mac and a Linux Android Studio install video coming up
in the next two videos, so skip those two videos unless you want to also install
Android studio on a Mac or Linux machine. What you want to do is now go to the
video titled "Configure Android SDK on all three platforms" and there we'll go
through the configuration steps we need, to get up and running in Android Studio.
So I'll see you in the next video.