Original subtitles

Kind: captions Language: en

In this video we're going to make some configuration changes to Android Studio,

and also install a few extra options that are useful. So start by launching

Android Studio and then click on the Configure menu at the bottom of the

screen down here, as you can see me doing now. So next we have to launch something

called the SDK Manager. So I'm going to select that, and this is where you manage

the various components of Android Studio, and make some changes which we're about

to do. Now when it starts, you may have seen a status at the bottom of the

window, briefly, while it checked for updates.

Now this window's actually resizable, even though the icons don't show on windows.

So you can resize it instead of looking at the various packages in a smallest box.

I've already done that, as you can see. Okay so at the top of the window you

can see the path to your SDK, Android SDK location. That's the, SDK stands for

Software Development Kit. The SDK is all the classes that make up Android, as well

as things like the emulator and a few other tools. One problem you can get, is

if you've installed your SDK in a location that contains spaces in its

path. This can happen on Windows, in particular. Windows allows spaces in user

names, so your home directory could end up being something like

C:\Users\Tim Buchalka

It's not a good idea to use spaces in the names of objects, including directories and user names.

However, Windows does allow it. If there is a space somewhere in your SDK path,

you won't be able to make any changes on the screen - everything might be disabled.

Now this doesn't just affect Android Studio - you'll also get problems with

other programs if your home directory contains a space. So to proceed in that

scenario, you'll need to move your SDK folder to a different location, so that

there's no spaces in its name. Now obviously, you can see in my case, I haven't got any

spaces so I'm good to go. But if you have got spaces, use your operating system's

file manager program to copy the SDK directory to another location on Windows,

and keep in mind this generally only happens on Windows. You could copy the

Android directory to \users\public, for example. You'll have

full permissions to public and there'll be no problems moving it there.

But you can also put it anywhere that you have permission to write to. Just make sure

there's no spaces in the path. Alright, so this is the Android SDK

Manager, and from here what we can do is install some additional features, and we

can also update some components, if in fact, updates are available. So on the SDK

platforms tab, you can see that all versions of Android that have been

released there, going way back to 2.1 at the bottom of the screen. So come

over here and click on the Show package details option, that checkbox. We can

expand those Android versions and you can see there's quite a lot that you can

add to each one. There's really no need to install most of the previous Androids,

and I certainly don't suggest you try to install all of them. The latest Android

SDK platform also allows you to create apps that run on earlier versions, so you

don't need the other versions to create your apps. The other thing to be aware of

is that your SDK directory can get very big if you install a lot of options.

40 gigabytes is very easy to get to, and that's really without everything installed.

So if you went a bit mad here, you could end up using an awful lot

of disk space. However, if you want to preview layouts in earlier Android

versions, then you will need to install the Android SDK platform for that

version. Now that probably won't make much sense at the moment but we'll do

that later in the course, if needed. You can come back in here later, though, and

install more things, when you've decided that you need them. So there are quite a

few options here but it looks far worse than it is. The various components are

pretty much the same for every Android version, so we can concentrate on the

latest version at the top, android 10.0 Q. Now if you see something there that says

preview, then you're going to want to ignore that. Don't install anything

marked preview. Now in this case, because Android Q was released shortly before I

recorded this video, it's the latest released version and we're not seeing a

preview version. So anytime we see a preview version, I suggest you ignore it.

By the way, a preview means it's not ready for release.

It's basically there for testing for experienced developers and not

recommended when you're learning to program a specific technology. But if

you see a later version than this, after you're watching this video, that's not

a preview, then also feel free to install that as well.

But as of the time I'm recording this video, Android 10.0 API 29 is the

latest version, as you can see. Alright so a good guide is to make sure the sources for

Android option is available, and you can see that's checked on my

installation. If the sources aren't available, and you can see that they are

now for Android 10.0, then install the most recent version that does have the

sources. We're going to install the Android API 29. That may already be installed and

in fact it is, you can see in my case, but it may or may not be on your computer, so

check it if it isn't. So specifically, what we want to do is install Android

SDK platform 29, which is checked, sources for Android 29, which is checked.

We also want to install this Intel x86 atom system image. I'm going to also come

down here and select the Google API's Intel x86 atom system image which was

already checked, and down here Google Play Intel x86 atom system image.

Don't worry about those Atom_64 images. You'll want them if you're

writing native coding modules for C, for example, but we won't be doing that.

These are actually 64-bit versions of Android, but they'll run slower even on a 64-bit

operating system. This is fairly intuitive: if you untick something it'll be

uninstalled. Once you've been using Android Studio for a while and you've

received a number of updates, you may want to remove older versions of some

components. To do that you just untick the box next to the component, and then

click on the Apply button. We don't want to remove anything at this stage, so make

sure you don't untick anything that's already installed. It's not the end of the

world if you do - you can just come back in here and install it again.

If you've ticked anything that wasn't already installed, click Apply to install it, and

I did that so I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna click on OK, and the components

we download will be downloaded and installed. What we need to do is accept the

licensing agreement so just click on Accept, for anywhere that there's a little

red asterix, as you can see there, until you get to the stage that Next is

available. Click on that, and it's going to go ahead now and download and install what

we selected on that screen. Just so we can see some of the things that are

there while it's actually installing; so looking at those components that we've got,

we've got the Android SDK platform that we selected. Well that's basically

Android, so we definitely need that. As I said, you only need to install the latest

version. The next component that we want to install is the sources for Android 29.

That's the source code for Android and it's very useful when you're using the

various components in your code. You can go in and have a look at the code for

Android and get ideas on how it all works. If you're installing a version

later than APR 29 then the sources may not be

available straightaway. That's fine - just proceed without them, and keep checking in

the SDK Manager every week or so, and eventually they'll be available. Check it,

click Apply and install them. So the remaining components that I selected

are the system images for the emulators. So an emulator is, basically, an Android

device running on your computer, and you can use them instead of buying loads of

Android phones for testing on. We don't need to install all of these, though.

The first few there are for TVs and Android wear devices; watches and the like. For me,

they're not currently available under Android 10.0, but note there is options

down there for Android TV wear devices etc under Android 9, so in time they'll

appear as well. But we're not covering TV and wearable devices in this course, so

there's no need to install those emulators if they appear on your list.

What we did, is install those three emulators; Intel x86 atom system image,

Google API's Intel x86 atom system image and Google Play Intel x86 atom system image.

We'll talk more about those a bit later. The reason that there's now three

different system images, is that Google have included access to the Google Play

Store on the Google Play images. That means you can install apps from the Play

Store on the emulator, which is very useful for testing purposes. There is a

downside though. The Google Play image restricts access just like a physical

Android device. So there are a fair few things that you can't do with the Google Play

images, and that's why we also need the Google API image as well. The third image

I installed, the plain Intel x86 atom system image, well that can be useful to

check how your app behaves when something like YouTube can't be

installed. And if your app is going to make use of any Google services, you can see

what happens when they aren't installed.

Alright, so you can see at this point now, we're actually finished there. I'm going to click

on Finish, and that's actually finished it's job. This time we're now going to go back

up and click on SDK tools, and then we're gonna come over here to Show package

details and check that box as well. Now quite a lot of the stuff in here

is now obsolete, and you certainly won't want to install those without a very

good reason. You can see that the SDK manager includes an option to hide

obsolete packages and that's ticked by default, which keeps things simpler and I

generally would recommend you leave that on. Anything that relates to a preview

version, we don't want to install. So as you scroll down, if you see

anything that's marked with RC and a number, for example, that stands for

Release Candidate. It's not a final version and you shouldn't, in general,

install it. Most of what we want should already be installed, but there may be

updates available so check the rightmost column to see if any of the components

are showing update. You can see for me, right now, none of them are. If updates

are available, make sure they're selected. Click Apply to install them before we

add anything else. Alright, so in the Android SDK build

tool section, which was this first section down here, scroll down to the bottom, we

want the highest version available, and you can see at the moment, that's 29.0.2

as I record this video, but if you've got a later

version available and it's not marked as a Release Candidate, then choose that one

instead. In fact, it should already be installed anyway, and you can see in this

case, we had it installed for us. So scrolling down now, Google have separated

the Android emulator from the rest of the platform tools, so we want to make sure,

if you scroll down here, that Android emulator is checked, the Android SDK

platform tools are checked and Android SDK tools are checked, and you can see in

my case, they are all checked. So make sure they are if you're following along.

But there's two here that I do suggest you check; Documentation for Android SDK,

check that, and also Google Play Services - I suggest you check that as well. Google

Play Services provides things like Google Maps, so you can include mapping

on your apps, so it's a useful thing to install. And the other thing that I

suggest you install is a Google USB driver, and we click on that. You'll

need that on Windows and it probably won't appear on a Linux or Mac computer

installation. On Windows, though, make sure you check it otherwise you'll have

problems connecting your phone to Android Studio. Now also as we scroll

down, you can see down the bottom there, the Intel x86 emulator accelerator HAXM

installer should be ticked already, if you installed that in the previous video.

And if you had problems installing HAXM earlier, then it's worth ticking it here.

That way you can run the installer again, if you manage to get VTX working on your

bios, assuming you don't have an AMD CPU, of course. Now if you enabled the Windows

hypervisor platform, you don't need HAXM. In that case, leave it unticked and

that's generally if you've followed along and did the steps I

outlined in the Windows Android Studio installation

video for an AMD CPU. Alright so if everything is selected, click on Apply. We're gonna

click on OK, and we'll let that take go ahead and

download and install what it needs to. And if you do get prompted for a license

agreement, then go ahead and select that if it's appropriate. In my case, you saw

that I didn't get asked for anything so I haven't checked anything. And just a

reminder that you can go back into the SDK Manager as often as you want to

install new components or delete ones that you've replaced with newer versions.

So if you forget to install something, it's really not the end of the world.

You can come back here and install it in a later time.

OK so you can see that's now finished. I want to click on Finish. I'm gonna click on OK at this point.

Alright, so at this point now we're back to the welcome screen and we can end the video.

So I'll stop the video here but in the next one,

we'll look at some useful settings that you can make to Android Studio

to make it a bit easier to use. See you in the next video.