In this video we're going to make some configuration changes to Android Studio,
and also install a few extra options that are useful. So start by launching
Android Studio and then click on the Configure menu at the bottom of the
screen down here, as you can see me doing now. So next we have to launch something
called the SDK Manager. So I'm going to select that, and this is where you manage
the various components of Android Studio, and make some changes which we're about
to do. Now when it starts, you may have seen a status at the bottom of the
window, briefly, while it checked for updates.
Now this window's actually resizable, even though the icons don't show on windows.
So you can resize it instead of looking at the various packages in a smallest box.
I've already done that, as you can see. Okay so at the top of the window you
can see the path to your SDK, Android SDK location. That's the, SDK stands for
Software Development Kit. The SDK is all the classes that make up Android, as well
as things like the emulator and a few other tools. One problem you can get, is
if you've installed your SDK in a location that contains spaces in its
path. This can happen on Windows, in particular. Windows allows spaces in user
names, so your home directory could end up being something like
C:\Users\Tim Buchalka
It's not a good idea to use spaces in the names of objects, including directories and user names.
However, Windows does allow it. If there is a space somewhere in your SDK path,
you won't be able to make any changes on the screen - everything might be disabled.
Now this doesn't just affect Android Studio - you'll also get problems with
other programs if your home directory contains a space. So to proceed in that
scenario, you'll need to move your SDK folder to a different location, so that
there's no spaces in its name. Now obviously, you can see in my case, I haven't got any
spaces so I'm good to go. But if you have got spaces, use your operating system's
file manager program to copy the SDK directory to another location on Windows,
and keep in mind this generally only happens on Windows. You could copy the
Android directory to \users\public, for example. You'll have
full permissions to public and there'll be no problems moving it there.
But you can also put it anywhere that you have permission to write to. Just make sure
there's no spaces in the path. Alright, so this is the Android SDK
Manager, and from here what we can do is install some additional features, and we
can also update some components, if in fact, updates are available. So on the SDK
platforms tab, you can see that all versions of Android that have been
released there, going way back to 2.1 at the bottom of the screen. So come
over here and click on the Show package details option, that checkbox. We can
expand those Android versions and you can see there's quite a lot that you can
add to each one. There's really no need to install most of the previous Androids,
and I certainly don't suggest you try to install all of them. The latest Android
SDK platform also allows you to create apps that run on earlier versions, so you
don't need the other versions to create your apps. The other thing to be aware of
is that your SDK directory can get very big if you install a lot of options.
40 gigabytes is very easy to get to, and that's really without everything installed.
So if you went a bit mad here, you could end up using an awful lot
of disk space. However, if you want to preview layouts in earlier Android
versions, then you will need to install the Android SDK platform for that
version. Now that probably won't make much sense at the moment but we'll do
that later in the course, if needed. You can come back in here later, though, and
install more things, when you've decided that you need them. So there are quite a
few options here but it looks far worse than it is. The various components are
pretty much the same for every Android version, so we can concentrate on the
latest version at the top, android 10.0 Q. Now if you see something there that says
preview, then you're going to want to ignore that. Don't install anything
marked preview. Now in this case, because Android Q was released shortly before I
recorded this video, it's the latest released version and we're not seeing a
preview version. So anytime we see a preview version, I suggest you ignore it.
By the way, a preview means it's not ready for release.
It's basically there for testing for experienced developers and not
recommended when you're learning to program a specific technology. But if
you see a later version than this, after you're watching this video, that's not
a preview, then also feel free to install that as well.
But as of the time I'm recording this video, Android 10.0 API 29 is the
latest version, as you can see. Alright so a good guide is to make sure the sources for
Android option is available, and you can see that's checked on my
installation. If the sources aren't available, and you can see that they are
now for Android 10.0, then install the most recent version that does have the
sources. We're going to install the Android API 29. That may already be installed and
in fact it is, you can see in my case, but it may or may not be on your computer, so
check it if it isn't. So specifically, what we want to do is install Android
SDK platform 29, which is checked, sources for Android 29, which is checked.
We also want to install this Intel x86 atom system image. I'm going to also come
down here and select the Google API's Intel x86 atom system image which was
already checked, and down here Google Play Intel x86 atom system image.
Don't worry about those Atom_64 images. You'll want them if you're
writing native coding modules for C, for example, but we won't be doing that.
These are actually 64-bit versions of Android, but they'll run slower even on a 64-bit
operating system. This is fairly intuitive: if you untick something it'll be
uninstalled. Once you've been using Android Studio for a while and you've
received a number of updates, you may want to remove older versions of some
components. To do that you just untick the box next to the component, and then
click on the Apply button. We don't want to remove anything at this stage, so make
sure you don't untick anything that's already installed. It's not the end of the
world if you do - you can just come back in here and install it again.
If you've ticked anything that wasn't already installed, click Apply to install it, and
I did that so I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna click on OK, and the components
we download will be downloaded and installed. What we need to do is accept the
licensing agreement so just click on Accept, for anywhere that there's a little
red asterix, as you can see there, until you get to the stage that Next is
available. Click on that, and it's going to go ahead now and download and install what
we selected on that screen. Just so we can see some of the things that are
there while it's actually installing; so looking at those components that we've got,
we've got the Android SDK platform that we selected. Well that's basically
Android, so we definitely need that. As I said, you only need to install the latest
version. The next component that we want to install is the sources for Android 29.
That's the source code for Android and it's very useful when you're using the
various components in your code. You can go in and have a look at the code for
Android and get ideas on how it all works. If you're installing a version
later than APR 29 then the sources may not be
available straightaway. That's fine - just proceed without them, and keep checking in
the SDK Manager every week or so, and eventually they'll be available. Check it,
click Apply and install them. So the remaining components that I selected
are the system images for the emulators. So an emulator is, basically, an Android
device running on your computer, and you can use them instead of buying loads of
Android phones for testing on. We don't need to install all of these, though.
The first few there are for TVs and Android wear devices; watches and the like. For me,
they're not currently available under Android 10.0, but note there is options
down there for Android TV wear devices etc under Android 9, so in time they'll
appear as well. But we're not covering TV and wearable devices in this course, so
there's no need to install those emulators if they appear on your list.
What we did, is install those three emulators; Intel x86 atom system image,
Google API's Intel x86 atom system image and Google Play Intel x86 atom system image.
We'll talk more about those a bit later. The reason that there's now three
different system images, is that Google have included access to the Google Play
Store on the Google Play images. That means you can install apps from the Play
Store on the emulator, which is very useful for testing purposes. There is a
downside though. The Google Play image restricts access just like a physical
Android device. So there are a fair few things that you can't do with the Google Play
images, and that's why we also need the Google API image as well. The third image
I installed, the plain Intel x86 atom system image, well that can be useful to
check how your app behaves when something like YouTube can't be
installed. And if your app is going to make use of any Google services, you can see
what happens when they aren't installed.
Alright, so you can see at this point now, we're actually finished there. I'm going to click
on Finish, and that's actually finished it's job. This time we're now going to go back
up and click on SDK tools, and then we're gonna come over here to Show package
details and check that box as well. Now quite a lot of the stuff in here
is now obsolete, and you certainly won't want to install those without a very
good reason. You can see that the SDK manager includes an option to hide
obsolete packages and that's ticked by default, which keeps things simpler and I
generally would recommend you leave that on. Anything that relates to a preview
version, we don't want to install. So as you scroll down, if you see
anything that's marked with RC and a number, for example, that stands for
Release Candidate. It's not a final version and you shouldn't, in general,
install it. Most of what we want should already be installed, but there may be
updates available so check the rightmost column to see if any of the components
are showing update. You can see for me, right now, none of them are. If updates
are available, make sure they're selected. Click Apply to install them before we
add anything else. Alright, so in the Android SDK build
tool section, which was this first section down here, scroll down to the bottom, we
want the highest version available, and you can see at the moment, that's 29.0.2
as I record this video, but if you've got a later
version available and it's not marked as a Release Candidate, then choose that one
instead. In fact, it should already be installed anyway, and you can see in this
case, we had it installed for us. So scrolling down now, Google have separated
the Android emulator from the rest of the platform tools, so we want to make sure,
if you scroll down here, that Android emulator is checked, the Android SDK
platform tools are checked and Android SDK tools are checked, and you can see in
my case, they are all checked. So make sure they are if you're following along.
But there's two here that I do suggest you check; Documentation for Android SDK,
check that, and also Google Play Services - I suggest you check that as well. Google
Play Services provides things like Google Maps, so you can include mapping
on your apps, so it's a useful thing to install. And the other thing that I
suggest you install is a Google USB driver, and we click on that. You'll
need that on Windows and it probably won't appear on a Linux or Mac computer
installation. On Windows, though, make sure you check it otherwise you'll have
problems connecting your phone to Android Studio. Now also as we scroll
down, you can see down the bottom there, the Intel x86 emulator accelerator HAXM
installer should be ticked already, if you installed that in the previous video.
And if you had problems installing HAXM earlier, then it's worth ticking it here.
That way you can run the installer again, if you manage to get VTX working on your
bios, assuming you don't have an AMD CPU, of course. Now if you enabled the Windows
hypervisor platform, you don't need HAXM. In that case, leave it unticked and
that's generally if you've followed along and did the steps I
outlined in the Windows Android Studio installation
video for an AMD CPU. Alright so if everything is selected, click on Apply. We're gonna
click on OK, and we'll let that take go ahead and
download and install what it needs to. And if you do get prompted for a license
agreement, then go ahead and select that if it's appropriate. In my case, you saw
that I didn't get asked for anything so I haven't checked anything. And just a
reminder that you can go back into the SDK Manager as often as you want to
install new components or delete ones that you've replaced with newer versions.
So if you forget to install something, it's really not the end of the world.
You can come back here and install it in a later time.
OK so you can see that's now finished. I want to click on Finish. I'm gonna click on OK at this point.
Alright, so at this point now we're back to the welcome screen and we can end the video.
So I'll stop the video here but in the next one,
we'll look at some useful settings that you can make to Android Studio
to make it a bit easier to use. See you in the next video.