Developers
Android Studio provides everything you need to start developing apps for Android, including the Android Studio IDE and the Android SDK tools.
Note: If you have not yet downloaded Android Studio, download it now.
Before installing Android Studio, make sure you have JDK 6 or higher installed—the JRE
alone is not sufficient. When developing for Android 5.0 (API level 21) and higher, you will need to install JDK 7.
To check if you have the correct version of the JDK installed, open a terminal and type javac -version.
If the JDK is not available or the version is lower than version 6, download the
Java SE Development Kit 7.
[ Show instructions for all platforms ]
To set up Android Studio on Windows:
- Launch the
.exefile you downloaded. - Follow the setup wizard to install Android Studio and any necessary SDK tools.
On some Windows systems, the launcher script does not find where the JDK is installed. If you encounter this problem, you need to set an environment variable indicating the correct location.
Select Start menu > Computer > System Properties > Advanced System Properties. Then open Advanced tab > Environment Variables and add a new system variable
JAVA_HOMEthat points to your JDK folder, for exampleC:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_21.
The individual tools and other SDK packages used by Android Studio are installed in a separate directory. If you need to access the tools directly, use a terminal to navigate to the location where they are installed. For example:
\Users\<user>\sdk\
To set up Android Studio on Mac OSX:
- Launch the
.dmgfile you downloaded. - Drag and drop Android Studio into the Applications folder.
- Open Android Studio and follow the setup wizard to install any necessary SDK tools.
If you need to use the Android SDK tools from a command line, you can access them at:
/Users/<user>/Library/Android/sdk/
To set up Android Studio on Linux:
- Unpack the
.zipfile you downloaded to an appropriate location for your applications. - To launch Android Studio, open a terminal, navigate to the
android-studio/bin/directory, and executestudio.sh.You may want to add
android-studio/bin/to your PATH environmental variable so that you can start Android Studio from any directory. - If the SDK is not already installed, follow the setup wizard to install the SDK and any
necessary SDK tools.
Note: To support 32-bit apps on a 64-bit machine, you will need to install the ia32-libs, lib32ncurses5-dev, and lib32stdc++6 packages.
You can now start developing apps in Android Studio! Later on, you may want to add packages or update them.
The stand-alone SDK Tools package does not include a complete Android development environment. It includes only the core SDK tools, which you can access from a command line or with a plugin for your favorite IDE (if available).
Note: If you have not yet downloaded the SDK tools, download them now. For a complete IDE and Android SDK package, we recommend downloading Android Studio.
[ Show instructions for all platforms ]
To get started on Windows:
Your download package is an executable file that starts an installer. The installer checks your machine for required tools, such as the proper Java SE Development Kit (JDK), and installs them if necessary. The installer then saves the Android SDK Tools to a specified location.
- Double-click the
.exefile to start the install. - Make a note of the name and location where you saved the SDK on your system—you will need to refer to them later when using the SDK tools from the command line.
- Once the installation completes, the installer starts the Android SDK Manager.
To get started on Mac OSX:
- Unpack the
.zipfile you downloaded. By default, the file is unpacked into a directory namedandroid-sdk-mac_x86. - Move the directory to an appropriate location on your machine, such as a "Development" directory in your home directory.
- Make a note of the name and location of the SDK directory on your system—you will need to refer to them later when using the SDK tools from the command line.
To get started on Linux:
- Unpack the
.tgzfile you downloaded. - Make a note of the name and location of the unpacked SDK directory on your system—you will need to refer to them later when using the SDK tools from the command line.
Troubleshooting Ubuntu
- If you need help installing and configuring Java on your development machine, you might find these resources helpful:
- Here are the steps to install Java:
If you are running a 64-bit distribution on your development machine, you need to install additional packages first. For Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander) and above, install the
libncurses5:i386,libstdc++6:i386, andzlib1g:i386packages usingapt-get:sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install libncurses5:i386 libstdc++6:i386 zlib1g:i386
For earlier versions of Ubuntu, install the
ia32-libspackage usingapt-get:apt-get install ia32-libs
- Next, install Java:
apt-get install sun-java6-jdk
Before you can begin developing apps with the Android SDK tools, you must install a few additional packages.