- What Is the Android SDK and How to Start Using It
- What Is the Android SDK?
- How to Install the Android SDK
- What Is the SDK Manager?
- What Are the Components of the Android SDK?
- Android SDK Tools
- SDK Build Tools
- SDK Platform-Tools
- SDK Platform
- Google APIs
- Android Emulator
- Conclusion
- Premium Android App Templates From CodeCanyon
- Get Started
- Before you begin
- App prerequisites
- Set up your app in your AdMob account
- Configure your app
- Initialize the Google Mobile Ads SDK
- Example MainActivity (excerpt)
- Kotlin
- Select an ad format
- Banner
- Interstitial
- Native
- Rewarded
- Additional resources
What Is the Android SDK and How to Start Using It
Android SDK is a software development kit developed by Google for the Android platform. The Android SDK allows you to create Android apps, and you don’t need to be an expert to use it. In this tutorial, I’ll explain what the Android SDK is and how to get started with it.
Android SDK comes bundled with Android Studio, Google’s official integrated development environment (IDE) for the Android operating system. You can learn about Android Studio and the Android App Development Kit in another of my articles.
In this post, we’ll look at:
- What is the Android SDK?
- How to install the Android SDK
- What is the Android SDK Manager?
- What are the components of the Android SDK?
What Is the Android SDK?
The Android SDK is a collection of software development tools and libraries required to develop Android applications. Every time Google releases a new version of Android or an update, a corresponding SDK is also released which developers must download and install. It is worth noting that you can also download and use the Android SDK independently of Android Studio, but typically you’ll be working through Android Studio for any Android development.
The Android SDK comprises all the tools necessary to code programs from scratch and even test them. These tools provide a smooth flow of the development process from developing and debugging, through to packaging.
The Android SDK is compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux, so you can develop on any of those platforms.
How to Install the Android SDK
The Android SDK is optimized for Android Studio, and hence to effectively reap its benefits, you will need to install Android Studio. Having the Android SDK managed from within Android Studio is easier since support for languages like Java, Kotlin, and C++ is handled automatically. Not only that, but updates to the Android SDK are handled automatically by Android Studio.
To install the Android SDK from within Android Studio, first start Android Studio.
- From the Android Studio start page, select Configure > SDK Manager.
- If you already have Android Studio open, the SDK Manager icon is found on the top right corner, as shown below.
Install the required Android SDK platform packages and developer tools. A good start is to install:
- Android SDK Build-Tools
- Android Emulator
- Android SDK Platform-Tools
- Android SDK Tools
- Documentation for Android SDK
Click Apply, and Android Studio will install the selected tools and packages.
What Is the SDK Manager?
The Android SDK is composed of modular packages that you can download, install, and update separately using the Android SDK Manager. The SDK Manager helps to update new SDK releases and updates whenever a new Android platform is released. The SDK manager can be found in the top-right corner of the Android Studio screen, as shown below.
All that is required to follow the instructions provided, and the updates will be immediately downloaded to your environment.
What Are the Components of the Android SDK?
The Android SDK consists of an emulator, development tools, sample projects with source code, and the required libraries to build Android applications. Let’s look at the key components one by one.
Android SDK Tools
Android SDK Tools is a component of the Android SDK. It includes a complete set of development and debugging tools for Android, and is included with Android Studio. The SDK Tools also consist of testing tools and other utilities required to develop an app.
SDK Build Tools
Build tools are required for building components for building the actual binaries for your Android app. Always ensure your build tools component is up to date by downloading the latest version in the Android SDK Manager.
SDK Platform-Tools
Android Platform-Tools are used to support the features for the current Android platform and are necessary for Android app development. These tools interface with the Android platform on the device you use for testing. They include:
- Android Debug Bridge (adb): This is a handy command-line tool that lets you communicate with a device. The adb command allows you to perform device actions, such as installing and debugging apps. It also provides access to a Unix shell that you can use to run a variety of commands on a device.
- fastboot: This lets you flash a device with a new system image.
- systrace: This tool helps collect and inspect timing information across all processes running on your device at the system level. It’s crucial for debugging app performance.
SDK Platform-Tools are backward compatible, so you need only one version of the SDK Platform-Tools.
SDK Platform
For each version of Android, there’s one SDK Platform available. These are numbered according to the Android version (e.g. Android 7 Nougat) and an API version (e.g. API Level 24). Before you build an Android app, you must specify an SDK Platform as your build target. Newer SDK Platform versions have more features for developers, but older devices may not be compatible with the newer platform versions.
Google APIs
Google provides a number of exclusive Google APIs to make developing your app easier. They also offer a system image for the emulator so you can test your app using the Google APIs.
Android Emulator
The Android Emulator is a QEMU-based device-emulation tool that simulates Android devices on your computer, allowing developers to test applications on different devices and Android API levels, without needing to have physical devices for each. The emulator comes with configurations for various Android phones, tablets, Wear OS, and Android TV devices.
The Android emulator provides almost all of the capabilities of a real Android device. You can perform the following activities:
- simulate phone calls and text messages
- simulate different network speeds
- specify the location of the device
- simulate hardware sensors such as rotation
- access Google Play Store and much more
Often it is faster and easier to test your app with an emulator instead of using a physical device.
Conclusion
In this post, we looked at some of the basics of the Android SDK. The Android SDK is the only way to develop for Android devices. Fortunately, it contains extensive documentation, tutorials, samples, best practice guidance, and an array of tools for many different development tasks.
Premium Android App Templates From CodeCanyon
Android Studio comes with some default templates to help start an app, but these are very basic and provide minimal, generic functionality.
CodeCanyon is an online marketplace that has hundreds of additional templates, which are way more feature-rich and domain-specific too. You can save days, even months, of effort by using one of them.
An Android app template is a great way to jump-start your app project or to learn some new skills by exploring the source code of a professionally made app.
Take a look at some of our roundups of the best Android app templates:
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Get Started
Integrating the Google Mobile Ads SDK into an app is the first step toward displaying ads and earning revenue. Once you’ve integrated the SDK, you can choose an ad format (such as native or rewarded video) and follow the steps to implement it.
Before you begin
To prepare your app, complete the steps in the following sections.
App prerequisites
- Use Android Studio 3.2 or higher
Make sure that your app’s build file uses the following values:
- A minSdkVersion of 16 or higher
- A compileSdkVersion of 28 or higher
Set up your app in your AdMob account
Register your app as an AdMob app by completing the following steps:
Register your app with AdMob. This step creates an AdMob app with a unique AdMob App ID that is needed later in this guide.
Configure your app
In your project-level build.gradle file, include Google’s Maven repository and Maven central repository in both your buildscript and allprojects sections:
Add the dependencies for the Google Mobile Ads SDK to your module’s app-level Gradle file, normally app/build.gradle :
Add your AdMob app ID (identified in the AdMob UI) to your app’s AndroidManifest.xml file. To do so, add a tag with android:name=»com.google.android.gms.ads.APPLICATION_ID» . You can find your app ID in the AdMob UI. For android:value , insert your own AdMob app ID, surrounded by quotation marks.
In a real app, use your actual AdMob app ID, not the one listed above. If you’re just looking to experiment with the SDK in a Hello World app, you can use the sample app ID shown above.
Note also that failure to add the tag as shown above results in a crash with the message:
(Optional) Declare AD_ID permission for previous versions to work with Android S.
If your app uses the Google Mobile Ads SDK version 20.4.0 or higher, you can skip this step since the SDK automatically declares the com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID permission and is able to access the Advertising ID whenever it’s available.
For apps that use the Google Mobile Ads SDK version 20.3.0 or lower and are targeting Android S, you must add the com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID permission in the AndroidManifest.xml file in order to target Android S:
To learn more about the com.google.android.gms.permission.AD_ID permission declaration, including how to disable it, please refer to this Play Console article.
Initialize the Google Mobile Ads SDK
Before loading ads, have your app initialize the Google Mobile Ads SDK by calling MobileAds.initialize() which initializes the SDK and calls back a completion listener once initialization is complete (or after a 30-second timeout). This needs to be done only once, ideally at app launch.
Ads may be preloaded by the Google Mobile Ads SDK or mediation partner SDKs upon calling MobileAds.initialize() . If you need to obtain consent from users in the European Economic Area (EEA), set any request-specific flags (such as tagForChildDirectedTreatment or tag_for_under_age_of_consent ), or otherwise take action before loading ads, ensure you do so before initializing the Google Mobile Ads SDK.
Here’s an example of how to call the initialize() method in an Activity:
Example MainActivity (excerpt)
Kotlin
If you’re using mediation, wait until the completion handler is called before loading ads, as this will ensure that all mediation adapters are initialized.
Select an ad format
The Google Mobile Ads SDK is now imported and you’re ready to implement an ad. AdMob offers a number of different ad formats, so you can choose the one that best fits your app’s user experience.
Banner
Rectangular ads that appear at the top or bottom of the device screen. Banner ads stay on screen while users are interacting with the app, and can refresh automatically after a certain period of time. If you’re new to mobile advertising, they’re a great place to start.
Interstitial
Full-screen ads that cover the interface of an app until closed by the user. They’re best used at natural pauses in the flow of an app’s execution, such as between levels of a game or just after a task is completed.
Native
Customizable ads that match the look and feel of your app. You decide how and where they’re placed, so the layout is more consistent with your app’s design.
Rewarded
Ads that reward users for watching short videos and interacting with playable ads and surveys. Used for monetizing free-to-play apps.
Additional resources
The Google Mobile Ads repository on GitHub demonstrates how to use the different ad formats that this API offers.
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
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