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Posted by Paris Hsu – Product Manager, Android Studio
Welcome to the Android Studio Narwhal Feature Drop 3 release. This update delivers significant improvements across the board to enhance your productivity. While we continue to innovate with powerful, project-aware AI assistance in Gemini, this release also brings fundamental upgrades to core development workflows. Highlights include a resizable Compose Preview for faster UI iteration and robust app Backup & Restore tools to ensure smooth app transfers across devices for your users. These additions, alongside a more context-aware Gemini, aim to streamline every phase of your development process.
These features are delivered as part of our new monthly release cadence for Android Studio, which allows us to provide improvements more frequently. Learn more about this change and how we’re accelerating development with monthly releases for Android Studio.
Develop with AI 🚀
Since launching Gemini in Android Studio, we’ve been working hard to introduce features and integrations across Studio with the needs of Android developers in mind. Developers have been telling us about the productivity benefits AI brings to their workflow — such as Entri, who reduced their UI development time per screen by 40%.
With this release, enhanced how you interact with Gemini — with improved options for providing project context, file attachments, and support for image attachments.
AGENTS.md: providing project-level context to Gemini
AGENTS.md is a Markdown file that lets you provide project-specific instructions, coding style rules, and other guidance that Gemini automatically uses for context. The AGENTS.md file can be checked into your version control system (like Git), ensuring your entire team shares the same core instructions and receives consistent, context-aware AI assistance. AGENTS.md files are located right alongside your code; use multiple AGENTS.md files across different directories for more granular control over your codebase.
We’re making it much easier to provide rich, on-the-fly context. That’s why we are also excited to share that two powerful features, Image Attachment and the @File Context, are graduating from Studio Labs and are now stable:
Image attachment – Gemini in Android Studio
The ability to attach images to your queries with Gemini is now available in the stable channel! This feature accelerates UI development and improves architectural understanding. You can:
- Generate UI from a mock-up: Provide a design image and ask Gemini to generate the Compose code.
- Understand an existing screen: Upload a screenshot and ask Gemini to explain the UI’s component structure and data flow.
- Debug UI bugs: Take a screenshot of a bug, circle the issue, and ask Gemini for solutions.
@file attachment – Gemini in Android Studio
The File attachment and context drawer are also graduating from Studio Labs! Easily attach relevant project files to your prompts by typing @ in the chat window. Gemini can then use the full context of those files to provide more accurate and relevant answers. Gemini will also suggest files it thinks are relevant, which you can easily add or remove.
What’s next: Deeper integration with MCP support
Looking ahead, in our summer episode of #TheAndroidShow, we went behind the scenes with Android Studio’s new MCP (Model Context Protocol) support. This protocol enhances Gemini’s interoperability with the broader developer ecosystem, allowing it to connect to tools like GitHub. Learn how MCP support can make Gemini’s Agent Mode even more helpful for your workflow, and try it today in the Canary channel.
Optimize and refine ✨
This release includes several new features to help you optimize your app, improve project organization, and ensure compliance.
Test app backup and restore
With new Android hardware devices coming out, ensuring a smooth app transfer experience for your users switching to a new device is critical. Android Studio now provides tools to generate a backup of your app’s data and restore it to another device. This makes it much easier to test your app’s backup and restore functionality and protect users from data loss. Additionally, you can create and attach backups to your run configurations, making it easy to utilize Backup and Restore for your day-to-day development.
Play policy insights
Get early warnings about potential Play policy violations to help you build more compliant apps with Play Policy Insights, now in Android Studio. The IDE now shows lint warnings directly in your code when it relates to a Google Play policy requirement. You can also integrate these lint checks into your CI/CD pipelines. These insights provide an overview of the policy, dos and don’ts, and links more resources, helping you address potential issues early in your development cycle.
Proguard inspections for overly broad keep rules
Android Studio’s Proguard file editor now warns you about keep rules that are overly broad. These rules can limit R8’s ability to optimize your code, potentially impacting app size and performance. This inspection helps you write more precise rules for a more optimized app.
Improved Android view for multi-module projects
For those working on large projects, the Android view has a new setting to display build files directly under their corresponding modules. This change makes it easier to navigate and manage build scripts in projects with many modules.
More control over automatic project sync
For developers working on large projects, automatic Gradle syncs can sometimes interrupt your workflow. To give you more control, we’re introducing an option to switch to manual project sync with reminders. When enabled, Android Studio will inform you when a sync is needed, but lets you decide when to run it, so there aren’t unexpected interruptions. You can try this feature by navigating to Settings > Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools.
Faster UI iteration 🎨
Resizable compose preview
Building responsive UIs just got easier: Compose Preview now supports dynamic resizing, giving you instant visual feedback on how your UI adapts to different screen sizes. Simply enter Focus mode in the Compose Preview and drag the edges to see your layout change in real-time. You can even save a specific size as a new @Preview annotation with a single click, streamlining your multi-device development process.
Summary
To recap, Android Studio Narwhal Feature Drop 3 includes the following enhancements and features:
Develop with AI
- AGENTS.md support: Provide project-specific context to Gemini for more tailored responses.
- Image attachment (Stable): Easily attach image files for Gemini in Android Studio.
- @File attachment (Stable): Easily attach project files as context for Gemini in Android Studio.
Optimize and refine
- Backup and restore support: Easily test your app’s data backup and restoration flow.
- Play policy insights: Get early warnings about potential Play Policy violations.
- Proguard inspections: Identify and fix overly broad keep rules for better optimization.
- Display build files under module: Improve project navigation in the Android view.
- Manual project sync: Gain more control over when Gradle syncs occur in large projects.
Faster UI iteration
- Resizable compose preview: Dynamically resize your previews to test responsive UIs instantly.
Get started
Ready to accelerate your development? Download Android Studio Narwhal 3 Feature Drop from the stable channel today!
Your feedback is essential. Please continue to share your thoughts by reporting bugs or suggesting features. For early access to the latest features, download Android Studio from the Canary channel.
Join our vibrant Android developer community on LinkedIn, Medium, YouTube, or X. We can’t wait to see what you build!
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