The companies don’t bother much about the tools their developer uses when they hire android developers. The only thing that counts is whether the final project is a good one or not. But the android developers know how much of a hassle it is to find the best development tool to make the work way more efficient.
So if you are looking for one of those “magic” tools, we’ll help you out. Let’s get straight to the topic:
Six of The Best Android Developer Tools
Android Studio
If you want nothing but the best, then Android Studio is what you’re looking for. It is the official integrated development environment for Android, so it has everything required to build an Android app.
With this development tool that is entirely created for Android, you’ll speed up your development process and develop quality apps much faster. By the way, it is also the official environment of Google’s Android OS. And the reason is apparent: the Android studio has endless features like the intelligent code editor, fast simulator, visual layout, real-time analyzer, and more.
If you want the most stable version, try the latest one, Android 2020.3. 1, which is the best way to build new Android App bundles and get into Android 9 Pie.
B4A
If you want something completely free of charge and really simple, try Basic4android. It uses a language similar to the Visual Basic language and can support more objects. Developers mainly use B4A for compiling their code to the Android native apps without having to work with other runtime environments.
Remember that B4A is only for Android apps and is not supported on other platforms. Here are a couple of its features that make it such a good choice:
- Allows you to develop Android apps with a more accessible programming language (BASIC)
- Allows you to manipulate the views as you with its visual editor
- Enables wireless debugging
In other words, if you want to simplify your coding, B4A will come in handy.
Mockplus
Another pretty helpful tool is Mockplus, one of the best app prototyping tools out there. It will help you create a good Android prototype with pretty extensive interactive features in only a few minutes. With Mockplus, you’ll also download an Android component library or APP prototype design samples which help a lot.
Android SDK
Do you need a development kit for Android? If yes, Android SDK has it all: it is a complete set of development and debugging tools.
You can download the Android SDK’s separate modular packages using the Android SDK Manager. The general toolkit includes:
- The SDK tool
- The SDK platform-tools
- The documentation of the SDK
- Android resources for the SDK
- Example of an SDK
- The Google API
- Support from Android
The version which is used today is 4.4. 2, which was released only a couple of months ago. So if you want to stay pretty fresh, it’s better to go with the latest version possible.
Stetho
Stetho is the debug bridge for Android applications. It allows you to access the Chrome Developer Tools feature natively. You can also enable the optional dumpapp tool that gives you a solid command-line interface for your application internals.
In other words, Stetho is a pretty advanced debug bridge designed for Android applications. It is used to connect the Android apps with Chrome and debug them with the Chrom developer tools.
The features are:
- Database Inspection
- Network Inspection
- View Hierarchy
- Dumpapp
- JavaScript Console
InstaBug
Who doesn’t hate errors and bugs, right? If you want to avoid them all, InstaBug will help you out. It is a tool that conducts beta testing and reports errors. It is a pretty popular tool used by such giants as PayPal, Yahoo, BuzzFeed, Scribd, and Lyft, to name a few. Most of them use Instabug for vulnerability queries.
So if you want your user groups and beta testers to share with you and QA specialists the detailed logs and screenshots of the error logs during the debugging, InstaBug is exactly what you’re looking for.
That’s it!
Now you know how to improve your Android development process, making it much smoother. If there are any of your favorite tools that we’ve skipped, please let us know in the comments section!
