Essential Tools for Better Android Development

We published the first version of this list years ago, and honestly, half of it aged badly. Adobe XD is gone. Vysor has better free alternatives now. So we sat down with our Android team and rebuilt the list from scratch, based on what we actually open every working day while shipping client projects. If you build Android apps for a living, or you're hiring someone who does, this is the toolkit we'd recommend right now.

Android Studio

Still the centre of everything. Android Studio is Google's official IDE, and there's no serious argument for using anything else on a native project. Yes, it's heavy. Give it 16 GB of RAM and an SSD and it stops being a problem. The features that earn their keep for us: Compose Preview (render your Jetpack Compose UI without deploying to a device), Live Edit for pushing code changes into a running app, the built-in CPU and memory profilers, and a Logcat that finally has decent filtering. We stay on the stable channel. Canary builds have burned us twice with broken Gradle sync during deadline weeks, and we don't gamble on that anymore.

Kotlin and the Jetpack libraries

Kotlin isn't a tool exactly, but it changed how fast we ship more than any single tool did. Null safety alone removes a whole category of production crashes. Around the language sits Jetpack: Room for the database layer, WorkManager for deferrable background jobs, ViewModel for surviving configuration changes, Navigation for moving between screens. New screens at our studio are written in Jetpack Compose by default — declarative UI, far less boilerplate than XML layouts, and previews that update as you type. If you're evaluating an agency for Android app development, ask what their Compose adoption looks like. The answer tells you a lot about how current their practice is.

The Emulator and Device Manager

The old AVD Manager lives on as the Device Manager inside Android Studio, and the emulator itself got genuinely quick once hardware acceleration became standard. We keep three virtual devices ready on every workstation: a small-screen phone running the oldest API level we support, a current Pixel image with Play Services, and a tablet. That combination catches most layout and compatibility surprises before QA ever sees a build. One habit worth stealing: run your app on the low-end profile at least once a week. Your users aren't all on flagships, even if your whole dev team is.

Figma

Our old list recommended Adobe XD. Adobe stopped developing it, so don't start there. Figma took over design handoff completely — designers share one file, developers inspect spacing, colours and text styles right in the browser, and Dev Mode exports assets at every density Android needs. It runs on anything with a browser, which matters when your designers are on Macs and half your developers are on Linux.

Git, GitHub and GitHub Actions

Version control is table stakes. CI is where teams separate themselves. Every pull request on our Android projects triggers a GitHub Actions workflow: compile, run unit tests, run lint, build a debug APK. It costs nothing at small scale, and it means a broken build never reaches another developer's machine. GUI clients are a matter of taste — some of us live in the terminal, a couple swear by Sourcetree — but the automation layer is non-negotiable in 2026.

Google Play Console

A one-time USD 25 fee gets you a developer account, and the console has quietly grown into a serious QA tool. Internal testing tracks push builds to your team within minutes. Pre-launch reports run your app on real physical devices and hand back crash logs and screenshots. Android Vitals shows your ANR rates and startup times against benchmarks from comparable apps. We check Vitals weekly on every live app we maintain, because Google factors those numbers into Play Store visibility.

scrcpy

This is what we replaced Vysor with, and it's free and open source. scrcpy mirrors a physical device's screen to your computer over ADB with almost no lag — no account, no watermark, no paywall. Plug in a phone, run one command, and you can drive the device with your mouse and keyboard while recording the session for bug reports. Every Android developer on our team has it installed. Every single one.

LeakCanary and the Layout Inspector

Memory leaks are silent until users complain the app feels sluggish after ten minutes of use. LeakCanary sits in your debug build and shouts the moment an Activity or Fragment leaks, with a reference chain that tells you exactly why. Pair it with Android Studio's Layout Inspector, which shows the live view hierarchy of a running app — Compose included — and you can settle the why-is-this-screen-janky argument with evidence instead of opinions.

Firebase Crashlytics

Once the app ships, Crashlytics is our early-warning system. Real-time crash reports, grouped by root cause, with the exact device model and OS version attached. The free tier covers what most products need. We've caught manufacturer-specific crashes on devices none of us own, sometimes within an hour of a release going live. That's the difference between a quiet fix in the next patch and a one-star review spree.

Tools don't replace judgement

A quick reality check to close. We've inherited plenty of half-finished projects over the years (our case studies include a few rescue stories), and the failures were never about missing tools. They were about missing process — no CI, no crash reporting, no testing tracks, nobody watching Vitals. The toolkit above costs almost nothing. What it needs is a team disciplined enough to use it every day, whether that team sits in-house or you bring in dedicated Android and Kotlin developers from outside. And if you're budgeting a project and wondering what the team and tooling side actually costs, we've broken that down in our guide to mobile app development cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Android Studio free to use for commercial projects?

Yes. Android Studio is completely free, including for commercial work, and it runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. The only mandatory spend for publishing is the one-time USD 25 Google Play developer registration. Everything else on this list has a usable free tier.

Should I test on the emulator or on real devices?

Both. The emulator is faster for day-to-day development and lets you simulate API levels and screen sizes you don't own. Real devices catch what emulators miss: camera quirks, manufacturer skins, thermal throttling and genuine touch behaviour. We develop against the emulator and never sign off a release without a pass on physical hardware.

Do I need to learn Java before Kotlin for Android development?

Not anymore. Kotlin has been Google's preferred Android language since 2019, the official documentation is Kotlin-first, and Jetpack Compose is Kotlin-only. Reading Java helps when you touch older codebases, but a newcomer should start with Kotlin and pick up Java patterns as needed.

Need a team that already has this toolkit warmed up? GTS Infosoft has spent 16 years building software, shipped 250+ apps, and holds ISO 9001:2015 certification, with clients across India, the USA and Australia. Talk to us about your Android project and we'll give you a straight answer on scope, timeline and cost.