Download Android Studio 4.2 – New Features and Changes in the Bag
Android Studio 4.2 is now available for download via the stable channel along with a handful of new features. Primarily, the upgrade includes the improved IntelliJ platform and a lot of other enhancements.
Android Studio 4.2 centers around improving developers’ productivity. It makes the work easier for the developers to migrate their projects and take advantage of the latest Android Gradle Plugin APIs. The download includes a whole range of enhancements for the existing features as well.
Android Studio 4.2 Features
Develop
IntelliJ Platform Update – Android Studio 4.2 includes all major features and updates of IntelliJ Community Edition 2020.2, including the GitHub UI pull requests. It also includes a new centralized window and more.
Safe Args Support – Safe Args Support is a recommended way to ensure data encapsulation. It is in use when a developer wants to pass data between two destinations through the Jetpack Navigation component. Android Studio 4.2 brings new codes for autocompletion of Directions Args and code navigation from source to XML.
New Project Wizard – The new release makes it easier to discover Android device types and includes a visual refresh to the new project wizard. It also includes a ViewBinding to each template as well. There is a visual update to the new module wizards that makes it easier for the developers to choose among the variety of module types available.
Debug
Database Inspector – It is a debugging tool that lets the developers interact with SQL databases while debugging an app. This release makes the picture surface appear larger and allows resizing them for convenient customization of SQL statements. It also provides queries regarding histories and makes it easier to debug an app after a crash.
Other feature includes Retrace Command Line Tool which is used for Kotlin and Java programming language code.
Build
AGP Upgrade Assitant – It is a new functionality that allows you to toggle the commands that will be executed on the project to upgrade it to a higher version of AGP. You can easily preview which files will be affected by the AGP upgrade.
Apply Changes Enhancements – Android Studio 4.2 has ‘Apply Changes’ to include adding resources that account for 23% of changes at the time of full restart. It also adds static final fields while running on an Android 11+ device or emulator.
Android Gradle Plugin 4.2 – The new resource compiler aids in improving build performance especially on Windows machines. It also has an added support of the APK v3 and APK v4 signing format.