To create a native Android app, one that can directly use all the features and functionality available on an Android phone or tablet, you need to use the Android platform's Java API framework. This is the API that allows you to perform common tasks such as drawing text, shapes, and colors on the screen, playing sounds or videos, and interacting with a device's hardware sensors. Over the years, the Android API framework has evolved to become more stable, intuitive, and concise. As a result, being an Android developer today is easier than ever—even more so if you use Android Studio, the official tool for working with the framework.
In this tutorial, I'll show you how to create your first Android app. While doing so, I'll also introduce you to important Android-specific concepts such as views, layouts, and activities.
We'll be starting from scratch to create a very simple app in this tutorial. If you prefer writing less code or need to develop your app as quickly as possible, however, consider using one of the native Android app templates available on CodeCanyon.
Using an app template, you can have a polished, ready-to-publish app in just a matter of hours. You can learn how to use an Android app template by referring to the following tutorial:
To be able to follow along, you'll need:
If you don't have Android Studio, do refer to the following tutorial to learn how to install and configure it:
You'll need an Android Studio project to design, develop, and build your app. So launch Android Studio and click on the Start a new Android Studio project button.
On the next screen, choose Add No Activity because we don't want to use any of the templates offered by Android Studio. Then press Next to proceed.
You'll now see a form where you can enter important details about your app, such as its name and package name. The name is, of course, the name your users will see on their phones when they install your app.
The package name, on the other hand, is a unique identifier for your app on Google Play. You must follow the Java package naming conventions while specifying it. For example, if your app's name is MyFirstApp and you work for an organization whose website address is example.com, the package name would ideally be "com.example.myfirstapp".
Next, you must decide the programming language you want to use while coding the app. For now, select Java and press Finish.
Kotlin has been the preferred language for developing Android apps for a while now, so you might want to use Kotlin for this project. In that case, you should select Kotlin as the language, as shown below. You can also see that changing the app name to MyClockApp updates the package name as well.
Newer versions of Android Studio also show you how many devices will be capable of running your app for a particular minimum API level support.
Android Studio will now take a minute or two to generate and configure the project.
An activity is one of the most important components of an Android app. It is what allows you to create and display a user interface to your users. An app can have one or more activities, each allowing the user to perform an action. For example, an email client app can have three activities: one for the user to sign up, one to sign in, and one to compose an email.
To keep this tutorial simple, we'll be creating an app with just one activity. To create the activity, in the Project panel of Android Studio, right-click on app and select New > Activity > Empty Activity.
In the dialog that pops up, type in MainActivity as the name of the activity, check the Launcher Activity option, and press Finish.
Checking the Launcher Activity option is important because it is what allows your users to open the activity using an Android launcher. As such, a launcher activity serves as an entry point to your app.
If you created the project to use Kotlin as your programming language, it makes sense to use Kotlin while creating a New Android Activity as well.
Each activity usually has at least one layout associated with it. When you created your activity in the previous step, you also generated an empty layout for it. To take a look at it, open the activity_main.xml file.
An activity's layout primarily consists of views and view groups. A view, sometimes referred to as a widget, is an individual component of your user interface. Buttons, text fields, labels, and progress bars are common examples of views. A view group is a component that can serve as a container for views. Usually, view groups also help you position and set the dimensions of your views.
ConstraintLayout is one of the most powerful and flexible view groups available today. By default, it is the root node of your activity's layout XML file. It looks like this:
