Overview of Android development on Windows

There are multiple paths for developing an Android device app using the Windows operating system. These paths fall into three main types: Native Android development, Cross-platform development, and Android game development. This overview will help you decide which development path to follow for developing an Android app and then provide next steps to help you get started using Windows to develop with:

In addition, this guide will provide tips on using Windows to:

Native Android

Native Android development on Windows means that your app is targeting only Android (not iOS or Windows devices). You can use Android Studio or Visual Studio to develop within the ecosystem designed specifically for the Android operating system. Performance will be optimized for Android devices, the user-interface look and feel will be consistent with other native apps on the device, and any features or capabilities of the user’s device will be straight-forward to access and utilize. Developing your app in a native format will help it to just ‘feel right’ because it follows all of the interaction patterns and user experience standards established specifically for Android devices.

Cross-platform

Cross-platform frameworks provide a single codebase that can (mostly) be shared between Android, iOS, and Windows devices. Using a cross-platform framework can help your app to maintain the same look, feel, and experience across device platforms, as well as benefiting from the automatic rollout of updates and fixes. Instead of needing to understand a variety of device-specific code languages, the app is developed in a shared codebase, typically in one language.

While cross-platform frameworks aim to look and feel as close to native apps as possible, they will never be as seamlessly integrated as a natively developed app and may suffer from reduced speed and degraded performance. Additionally, the tools used to build cross-platform apps may not have all of the features offered by each different device platform, potentially requiring workarounds.

A codebase is typically made up of UI code, for creating the user interface like pages, buttons controls, labels, lists, etc., and logic code, for calling web services, accessing a database, invoking hardware capabilities and managing state. On average, 90% of this can be reused, though there is typically some need to customize code for each device platform. This generalization largely depends on the type of app you’re building, but provides a bit of context that hopefully will help with your decision-making.

Choosing a cross-platform framework

• UI code: XML with Android Designer, and Material Theme
• Logic code: C# or F#
• Still able to tap into some native Android elements, but good for reuse of the code base for other platforms (iOS, Windows).
• Only logic code is shared across platforms, not UI code.
• Great for more complex apps with a device-specific user interface.

• UI code: XAML and .NET (with Visual Studio)
• Logic code: C#
• Shares around 60–90% of the logic and UI code across Android, iOS, and Windows device apps.
• Uses common user controls like Button, Label, Entry, ListView, StackLayout, Calendar, TabbedPage, etc. Create a Button and Xamarin Forms will figure out how to call the native button for each platform using the Binding Library to call Java or Swift code from C#.
• Great for simple apps, like internal or Line Of Business (LOB) apps, prototypes or MVPs. Any app that can look somewhat standard or generic, utilizing a simple user interface.

• UI code: JavaScript
• Logic code: JavaScript
• The goal of React Native isn’t to write the code once and run it on any platform, rather to learn-once (the React way) and write-anywhere.
• The community has added tools such asВ ExpoВ andВ Create React Native AppВ to help those wanting to build apps without using Xcode or Android Studio.
• Similar to Xamarin (C#), React Native (JavaScript) calls native UI elements (without the need for writing Java/Kotlin or Swift).

• UI code: HTML, CSS, JavaScript
• Logic code: JavaScript
• PWAs are web apps built with standard patterns to allow them to take advantage of both web and native app features. They can be built without a framework, but a couple of popular frameworks to consider are Ionic and PhoneGap.
• PWAs can be installed on a device (Android, iOS, or Windows) and can work offline thanks to the incorporation of a service-worker.
• PWAs can be distributed and installed without an app store using only a web URL. The Microsoft Store and Google Play Store allow PWAs to be listed, the Apple Store currently does not, though they can still be installed on any iOS device running 12.2 or later.
• To learn more, check out this introduction to PWAs on MDN.

Game development

Game development for Android is often unique from developing a standard Android app since games typically use custom rendering logic, often written in OpenGL or Vulkan. For this reason, and because of the many C libraries available that support game development, it’s common for developers to use C/C++ with Visual Studio, along with the Android Native Development Kit (NDK), to create games for Android. Get started with C/C++ for game development.

Get started with native Android development on Windows

This guide will get you started using Windows to create native Android applications. If you would prefer a cross-platform solution, see Overview of Android development on Windows for a brief summary of some options.

The most straight-forward way to create a native Android app is using Android Studio with either Java or Kotlin, though it is also possible to use C or C++ for Android development if you have a specific purpose. The Android Studio SDK tools compile your code, data, and resource files into an archive Android package, .apk file. One APK file contains all the contents of an Android app and is the file that Android-powered devices use to install the app.

Install Android Studio

Android Studio is the official integrated development environment for Google’s Android operating system. Download the latest version of Android Studio for Windows.

• If you downloaded an .exe file (recommended), double-click to launch it.
• If you downloaded a .zip file, unpack the ZIP, copy the android-studio folder into your Program Files folder, and then open the android-studio > bin folder and launch studio64.exe (for 64-bit machines) or studio.exe (for 32-bit machines).

Follow the setup wizard in Android Studio and install any SDK packages that it recommends. As new tools and other APIs become available, Android Studio will notify you with a pop-up, or check for updates by selecting Help > Check for Update.

Create a new project

Select File > New > New Project.

In the Choose your project window, you will be able to choose between these templates:

Basic Activity: Creates a simple app with an app bar, a floating action button and two layout files: one for the activity and one to separate out text content.

Empty Activity: Creates an empty activity and a single layout file with sample text content.

Bottom Navigation Activity: Creates a standard bottom navigation bar for an activity. See the Bottom Navigation Component in Google’s material design guidelines.

Learn more about selecting an activity template in the Android Studio docs.

Templates are commonly used to add activities to new and existing app modules. For example, to create a login screen for your app’s users, add an activity with the Login Activity template.

The Android operating system is based on the idea of components and uses the terms activity and intent to define interactions. An activity represents a single, focused task that a user can do. An activity provides a window for building the user interface using classes based on the View class. There is a lifecycle for activities in the Android operating system, defined by a set of six callbacks: onCreate() , onStart() , onResume() , onPause() , onStop() , and onDestroy() . The activity components interact with one another using intent objects. Intent either defines the activity to start or describes the type of action to perform (and the system selects the appropriate activity for you, which can even be from a different application). Learn more about Activities, the Activity Lifecycle, and Intents in the Android docs.

Java or Kotlin

Java became a language in 1991, developed by what was then Sun Microsystems, but which is now owned by Oracle. It has become one of the most popular and powerful programming languages with one of the largest support communities in the world. Java is class-based and object-oriented, designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. The syntax is similar to C and C++, but it has fewer low-level facilities than either of them.

Kotlin was first announced as a new open-source language by JetBrains in 2011 and has been included as an alternative to Java in Android Studio since 2017. In May 2019, Google announced Kotlin as it’s preferred language for Android app developers, so despite being a newer language, it also has a strong support community and has been identified as one of the fastest growing programming languages. Kotlin is cross-platform, statically typed, and designed to interoperate fully with Java.

Java is more widely used for a broader range of applications and offers some features that Kotlin does not, such as checked exceptions, primitive types that are not classes, static members, non-private fields, wildcard-types, and ternary-operators. Kotlin is specifically designed for and recommended by Android. It also offers some features that Java does not, such as null references controlled by the type system, no raw types, invariant arrays, proper function types (as opposed to Java’s SAM-conversions), use-site variance without wildcards, smart casts, and more. The Kotlin documentation offers a more in-depth look at the comparison to Java.

Minimum API Level

You will need to decide the minimum API level for your application. This determines which version of Android your application will support. Lower API levels are older and therefore generally support more devices, but higher API levels are newer and therefor provide more features.

Select the Help me choose link to open a comparison chart showing the device support distribution and key features associated with the platform version release.

Instant app support and Androidx artifacts

You may notice a checkbox to Support instant apps and another to Use androidx artifacts in your project creation options. The instant apps support is not checked and the androidx is checked as the recommended default.

Google Play Instant apps provide a way for people to try an app or game without installing it first. These instant apps can be surfaced across the Play Store, Google Search, social networks, and anywhere you share a link. By checking the Support instant apps box, you are asking Android Studio to include the Google Play Instant Development SDK with your project. To learn more about Google Play Instant apps and how to create an instant-enabled app bundle, see the Android documentation.

AndroidX artifacts represents the new version of the Android support library and provides backwards-compatibility across Android releases. AndroidX provides a consistent namespace starting with the string androidx for all available packages.

AndroidX is now the default library. To uncheck this box and use the previous support library requires removing the lastest Android Q SDK. See Uncheck use Androidx artifacts on StackOverflow for instructions, but first note that the former Support Library packages have been mapped into corresponding androidx.* packages. For a full mapping of all the old classes and build artifacts to the new ones, see Migrating to AndroidX.

Project files

The Android Studio Project window, contains the following files (be sure that the Android view is selected from the drop-down menu):

app > java > com.example.myfirstapp > MainActivity

The main activity and entry point for your app. When you build and run your app, the system launches an instance of this Activity and loads its layout.

app > res > layout > activity_main.xml

The XML file defining the layout for the activity’s user interface (UI). It contains a TextView element with the text «Hello World»

app > manifests > AndroidManifest.xml

The manifest file describing the fundamental characteristics of the app and each of its components.

Gradle Scripts > build.gradle

There are two files with this name: «Project: My First App», for the entire project, and «Module: app», for each app module. A new project will initially only have one module. Use the module’s build.file to control how the Gradle plugin builds your app. Learn more in the Android docs, Configure your build article.

Use C or C++ for Android game development

The Android operating system is designed to support applications written in Java or Kotlin, benefiting from tooling embedded in the system’s architecture. Many system features, like Android UI and Intent handling, are only exposed through Java interfaces. There are a few instances where you may want to use C or C++ code via the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) despite some of the associated challenges. Game development is an example, since games typically use custom rendering logic written in OpenGL or Vulkan and benefit from a wealth of C libraries focused on game development. Using C or C++ might also help you squeeze extra performance out of a device to achieve low latency or run computationally intensive applications, such as physics simulations. The NDK is not appropriate for most novice Android programmers however. Unless you have a specific purpose for using the NDK, we recommend sticking with Java, Kotlin, or one of the cross-platform frameworks.

To create a new project with C/C++ support:

In the Choose your project section of the Android Studio wizard, select the Native C++* project type. Select Next, complete the remaining fields, then select Next again.

In the Customize C++ Support section of the wizard, you can customize your project with the C++ Standard field. Use the drop-down list to select which standardization of C++ you want to use. Selecting Toolchain Default uses the default CMake setting. Select Finish.

Once Android Studio creates your new project, you can find a cpp folder in the Project pane that contains the native source files, headers, build scripts for CMake or ndk-build, and prebuilt libraries that are a part of your project. You can also find a sample C++ source file, native-lib.cpp , in the src/main/cpp/ folder which provides a simple stringFromJNI() function returning the string «Hello from C++». Additionally, you will find a CMake build script, CMakeLists.txt , in your module’s root directory required for building your native library.

To learn more, see the Android docs topic: Add C and C++ code to your project. For samples, see the Android NDK samples with Android Studio C++ integration repo on GitHub. To compile and run a C++ game on Android, use the Google Play Game services API.

Design guidelines

Device users expect applications to look and behave a certain way. whether swiping or tapping or using voice-controls, users will hold specific expectations for what your application should look like and how to use it. These expectations should remain consistent in order to reduce confusion and frustration. Android offers a guide to these platform and device expectations that combines the Google Material Design foundation for visual and navigational patterns, along with quality guidelines for compatibility, performance, and security.

Fluent Design System for Android

Microsoft also offers design guidance with the goal of providing a seamless experience across the entire portfolio of Microsoft’s mobile apps.

Fluent Design System for Android design and build custom apps that are natively Android while still uniquely Fluent.