What is the best IDE to develop Android apps in?

android eclipse intellij-idea
Jamey McElveen picture Jamey McElveen · Nov 11, 2009 · Viewed 266.2k times · Source

I am about to start developing an android app and need to get an IDE. Eclipse and the android eclipse plugin appears to be the natural choice. However I am familiar with intelliJ and re-sharper so I would prefer use intelliJ.

Has anyone used https://code.google.com/archive/p/idea-android/? Is this any good?

Should I just bite the bullet and learn Eclipse?

Answer

Pierre-Antoine LaFayette picture Pierre-Antoine LaFayette · Nov 11, 2009

LATEST NEWS

Android Studio has officially come out of beta and been released. It is now the official IDE for Android Development - Eclipse won't be supported anymore. It is definitely the IDE of choice for Android Development. Link to download page: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

NEWS

As of Google I/O 2013, the Android team has moved to IntelliJ Idea with the new Android Studio IDE: http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html

Great to see Google endorse Idea. It is safe to say that Android Studio, and thus Idea, will from now on be the definitive IDE for Android development! :D

ORIGINAL ANSWER

IntelliJ now has support for Android. See Enabling Android Support from the JetBrains help page and the Google Code project page for the plugin. The Getting Started wiki page is pretty helpful.

If you are used to IntelliJ, I don't think it would be beneficial to switch IDEs just for Android tools. You can work on Android with any text editor (I use Vim). If you're more productive with a specific environment I don't see why you'd have to learn a new one. Not worth it in my opinion. Plus I'm a big IntelliJ fan. The IntelliJ plugin lets you make apk files and push the app to the emulator, that's all you need for Android app development. I'd say you're safe sticking with IntelliJ.

Update: there is now an official free IDE for IntelliJ android dev! http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2010/10/intellij-idea-10-free-ide-for-android-development/

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