Build and Run Your App

Android Studio sets up new projects to deploy to the Android Emulator or a connected device with just a few clicks. Once your app is installed, Instant Run allows you to push code changes without building a new APK.

To build and run your app, select Run > Run in the menu bar (or click Run in the toolbar). If it's the first time running the app, Android Studio asks you to select a deployment target as shown in figure 1. Simply select a device to install and run your app.

Figure 1. The Select Deployment Target dialog shows available devices

If the dialog says, "No USB devices or running emulators detected," then you need to set up and connect your device or launch an emulator by clicking a device listed under Available Virtual Devices. If there are no virtual devices listed, click Create New Virtual Device and follow the Virtual Device Configuration wizard (see Create and Manage Virtual Devices).

Note: You can also deploy your app in debug mode by clicking Debug . Running your app in debug mode allows you to set breakpoints in your code, examine variables and evaluate expressions at run time, and run debugging tools. To learn more, see Debug Your App.

Select and build a different module

If your project has multiple modules beyond the default app module, you can build a specific module as follows:

• Select the module in the Project panel, and then click Build > Make Module module-name.

Android Studio builds the module using Gradle. Once the module is built, you can run and debug it if you've built a module for a new app or new device, or use it as a dependency if you've built a library or Google Cloud module.

To run a built app module:

• Click Run > Run and select the module from the Run dialog.

Change the run/debug configuration

When you run your app for the first time, Android Studio uses a default run configuration. The run configuration specifies the module to run, package to deploy, activity to start, target device, emulator settings, logcat options, and more.

The default run/debug configuration launches the default project activity and uses the Select Deployment Target dialog for target device selection. If the default settings don't suit your project or module, you can customize the run/debug configuration, or even create a new one, at the project, default, and module levels. To edit a run/debug configuration, select Run > Edit Configurations. For more information, see Create and Edit Run/Debug Configurations.

Change the build variant

By default, Android Studio builds the debug version of your app, which is intended only for testing, when you click Run. You need to build the release version to prepare your app for public release.

To change the build variant Android Studio uses, select Build > Select Build Variant in the menu bar (or click Build Variants in the windows bar), and then select a build variant from the drop-down menu. By default, new projects are set up with a debug and release build variant.

Using product flavors, you can create additional build variants for different versions of your app, each having different features or device requirements. To find out more about build variants and product flavors, see Configure Your Build.

Generate APKs

To create an APK for your app, follow these steps:

1. Select the build variant you want to build from the Build Variants window.
2. Click Build > Build APK in the menu bar.

   To instead build the APK and immediately run it on a device, click Run in the toolbar.

All built APKs are saved in project-name/module-name/build/outputs/apk/. You can also locate the generated APKs by clicking the link in the pop-up dialog that appears once the build is complete, as shown in figure 2.

Figure 2. Click the link to locate the generated APK files.

Note: Before you can generate a release version of your app for public distribution, you must sign your APK.

Monitor the build process

You can view details about the build process by clicking View > Tool Windows > Gradle Console (or by clicking Gradle Console in the tool window bar). The console displays each task that Gradle executes in order to build your app, as shown in figure 3.

Figure 3. The Gradle Console in Android Studio.

If your build variants use product flavors, Gradle also invokes tasks to build those product flavors. To view the list of all available build tasks, click View > Tool Windows > Gradle (or click Gradle in the tool window bar).

If an error occurs during the build process, the Messages window appears to describe the issue. Gradle may recommend some command-line options to help you resolve the issue, such as --stacktrace or --debug. To use command-line options with your build process:

1. Open the Settings or Preferences dialog:
   • On Windows or Linux, select File > Settings from the menu bar.
   • On Mac OSX, select Android Studio > Preferences from the menu bar.
2. Navigate to Build, Execution, Deployment > Compiler.
3. In the text field next to Command-line Options, enter your command-line options.
4. Click OK to save and exit.

Gradle will apply these command-line options the next time you try building your app.

About Instant Run

Introduced in Android Studio 2.0, Instant Run is a behavior for the Run and Debug commands that significantly reduces the time between updates to your app. Although your first build may take longer to complete, Instant Run pushes subsequent updates to your app without building a new APK, so changes are visible much more quickly.

Instant Run is supported only when you deploy the debug build variant, use Android plugin for Gradle version 2.0.0 or higher, and set minSdkVersion to 15 or higher in your app's module-level build.gradle file. For the best performance, set minSdkVersion to 21 or higher.

After deploying an app, a small, yellow thunderbolt icon appears within the Run button (or Debug button), indicating that Instant Run is ready to push updates the next time you click the button. Instead of building a new APK, it pushes just those new changes and, in some cases, the app doesn't even need to restart but immediately shows the effect of those code changes.

Instant Run pushes updated code and resources to your connected device or emulator by performing a hot swap, warm swap, or cold swap. It automatically determines the type of swap to perform based on the type of change you made. The video above provides interesting detail about how this all works under the hood. For a quick summary of how Instant Run behaves when you push certain code changes to a target device, however, see the following table.

Note: If you need to restart your app after a crash, do not launch it from your target device. Restarting your app from your target device does not apply any of your code changes since the last cold swap or incremental build. To launch your app with all your recent changes, click Run (or Debug ) from Android Studio.

Use Rerun

When pushing code changes that affect certain initializers, such as changes to an app's onCreate() method, you need to restart your app for the changes to take effect. To perform an incremental build and restart the app, click Rerun .

If you need to deploy a clean build, select Run > Clean and Rerun from the menu bar, or hold down the Shift key while clicking Rerun . This action stops the running app, performs a full clean build, and deploys the new APK to your target device.

Disable automatic activity restart

When performing a hot swap, your app keeps running but Android Studio automatically restarts the current activity. To disable this default setting:

1. Open the Settings or Preferences dialog:
   • On Windows or Linux, select File > Settings from the menu bar.
   • On Mac OSX, select Android Studio > Preferences from the menu bar.
2. Navigate to Build, Execution, Deployment > Instant Run.
3. Uncheck the box next to Restart activity on code changes.

If automatic activity restart is disabled, you can manually restart the current activity from the menu bar by selecting Run > Restart Activity.

Configure and optimize your project for Instant Run

Android Studio enables Instant Run by default for projects built using Android plugin for Gradle 2.0.0 and higher.

To update an existing project with the latest version of the plugin:

1. Open the Settings or Preferences dialog.

2. Navigate to Build, Execution, Deployment > Instant Run and click Update Project, as shown in figure 4.

   If the option to update the project does not appear, it’s already up-to-date with the latest Android plugin for Gradle.

   

   Figure 4. Updating the Android plugin for Gradle for an existing project.

You also need to change the build variant to a debug version of your app to start using Instant Run.

Improve build times by configuring DEX resources

When you deploy a clean build, Android Studio instruments your app to allow Instant Run to push code and resource updates. Although updating the running app happens much more quickly, the first build may take longer to complete. You can improve the build process by configuring a few DexOptions settings:

maxProcessCount

Sets the maximum number of DEX processes that can be started concurrently. If the Gradle daemon is already running, you need to stop the process before initializing it with a new maximum process count. You can terminate the Gradle daemon by calling one of the following from the Terminal window:

• On Windows, call gradlew --stop
• On Linux/Mac OSX, call ./gradlew --stop

javaMaxHeapSize

Sets the maximum memory allocation pool size for the dex operation. When passing a value, you can append the letter 'k' to indicate kilobytes, 'm' to indicate megabytes, or 'g' to indicate gigabytes.

The following example sets maxProcessCount to 4 and javaMaxHeapSize to "2g" in the module-level build.gradle file:

android {
  ...
  dexOptions {
    maxProcessCount 4 // this is the default value
    javaMaxHeapSize "2g"
  }
}

You should experiment with these settings by incrementing their values and observing the effect on your build times. You could experience a negative impact to performance if you allocate too many resources to the dexing process.

Enable dexing-in-process and incremental Java compilation

Android Plugin for Gradle version 2.1.0 and higher features additional build process improvements, including incremental Java compilation and dexing-in-process. Incremental Java compilation is enabled by default and reduces compilation time during development by only recompiling portions of the source that have changed or need to be recompiled.

Dexing-in-process performs dexing within the build process rather than in a separate, external VM process. This not only makes incremental builds much faster, but also significantly speeds up full builds. To enable this feature, you need to set the Gradle daemon's maximum heap size to at least 2048 MB. You can do this by including the following in your project's gradle.properties file:

org.gradle.jvmargs = -Xmx2048m

If you have defined a value for javaMaxHeapSize in your module-level build.gradle file, you need to set the daemon's max heap size to the value of javaMaxHeapSize + 1024 MB. For example, if you have set javaMaxHeapSize to "2g", you need to add the following to your project's gradle.properties file:

org.gradle.jvmargs = -Xmx3072m

Exclude your project from Windows Defender

On Windows systems, Windows Defender may cause slowdowns while using Instant Run. If you are using Windows Defender, you should exclude your Android Studio project folder from Windows Defender malware scans.

Improve build times when using Crashlytics

If your version of the Fabric Gradle plugin is lower than 1.21.6, Crashlytics may cause slower build times. To improve build performance while developing your app, you can either update the plugin to the latest version or disable Crashlytics for your debug build variant.

Report an Instant Run issue

You can help the Android Studio team fix issues you encounter while using Instant Run by submitting feedback about your experience. To report an issue, you need to follow these basic steps:

1. Enable Android Studio to log extra information about your Instant Run session.
2. If you want to submit feedback about an issue you encountered before completing the previous step, try to recreate the issue.
3. Submit a report immediately after you encounter an Instant Run issue.

What we collect

Enabling the IDE to log the following information about your Instant Run session helps the Android Studio team better understand the issue you encountered and is only ever used for that purpose:

• idea.log: This log captures detailed information about Android Studio and its SDK tools as they perform their various actions. You can view this log for yourself by selecting Help > Show Log in Explorer (or Show Log in Finder on Mac).
• build-info.xml: This is an intermediate file that Android Studio uses to coordinate Instant Run features with the Android plugin for Gradle.
• build.log: This log captures build information from Gradle. This is similar to the output you see when you run Gradle with the --info command line option and click View > Tool Windows > Gradle Console (or click Gradle Console in the tool window bar).
• Logcat output: captures Instant Run runtime events (that is, events with the InstantRun tag) from the target device or emulator while the app is running. To learn more about logcat outputs, read Write and View Logs with Logcat.
• profile.log: This log provides a profile of how quickly Gradle progressed through each build task.
• TARGET-*: This is an empty file that Android Studio names after your target device (for example, TARGET-MOTOROLA-NEXUS6).

Enable extra logging

To grant Android Studio permission to capture and send this information, follow these steps:

1. Open the Settings or Preferences dialog.
2. Navigate to Build, Execution, Deployment > Instant Run.
3. Check the Log extra info checkbox. You can disable this option at any time.
4. Click OK.

Report an issue

After you enable extra logging, recreate any Instant Run issue you previously experienced. Immediately after you reproduce an issue, submit a report as follows:

1. Select Help > Report Instant Run Issue from the menu bar. A dialog appears, similar to the one shown in figure 5.

   Figure 5. You can provide extra details in the text field and review the logs Android Studio will send along with your report.

2. Provide some additional information in the text field to describe your experience, such as steps to reproduce the issue or how actual behavior differed from your expectations.
3. When you are done, click OK.

Limitations of Instant Run

Instant Run is designed to speed up the build and deploy process in most situations. However, there are some aspects to using Instant Run that might affect its behavior and compatibility with your app. If you experience any other issues while using Instant Run, please file a bug.

Deploying to multiple devices

Instant Run uses different techniques to perform hot, warm, and cold swaps that are specific to the API level of the target device. For this reason, while deploying an app to multiple devices at once, Android Studio temporarily turns off Instant Run.

Multidexing your app

If your project is configured for Legacy Multidex—that is, when build.gradle is configured with multiDexEnabled true and minSdkVersion 20 or lower—and you deploy to target devices running Android 4.4 (API level 20) or lower, Android Studio disables Instant Run.

If minSdkVersion is set to 21 or higher, Instant Run automatically configures your app for multidex. Because Instant Run only works with the debug version of your app, you may need to configure your app for multidex when deploying your release build variant.

Running instrumented tests and performance profilers

Instrumented tests load both the debug APK and a test APK into the same process on a test device, allowing control methods to override the normal lifecycle of the app and perform tests. While running or debugging instrumented tests, Android Studio does not inject the additional methods required for Instant Run and turns the feature off.

While profiling an app, you should disable Instant Run. There is a small performance impact when using Instant Run and a slightly larger impact when overriding methods with a hot swap. This performance impact could interfere with information provided by performance profiling tools. Additionally, the stub methods generated with each hot swap can complicate stack traces.

Using third-party plugins

Android Studio temporarily disables the Java Code Coverage Library (JaCoCo) and ProGuard while using Instant Run. Because Instant Run only works with debug builds, this does not affect your release build.

Certain third-party plugins that perform bytecode enhancement may cause issues with how Instant Run instruments your app. If you experience these issues, but want to continue using Instant Run, you should disable those plugins for your debug build variant. You can also help improve compatibility with third-party plugins by filing a bug.

Pushing changes to multi-process apps

Instant Run only instruments your app's main process in order to perform hot swaps and warm swaps. When pushing code changes to other app processes, such as changes to a method implementation or an existing resource, Instant Run performs a cold swap.

Launching your app in a Work profile

If you run your app with Instant Run and open your app using a Work profile (or other secondary profile), your app will crash because the instrumented DEX files used by Instant Run are accessible only from the primary profile's user space.

If you want to continue using Instant Run, just avoid opening your app with the Work profile and be sure your run configuration does not use the --user user_id flag.

If you need to use your app with the Work profile, we recommend you create a new run configuration that includes the --user user_id flag, specifying the Work profile user ID. You can find the user ID by executing adb shell pm list users from command line. When you use the --user flag, Android Studio disables Instant Run for only that deployment; Instant Run will work again when you switch to a configuration without the --user flag.

Disable Instant Run

To disable Instant Run:

1. Open the Settings or Preferences dialog.
2. Navigate to Build, Execution, Deployment > Instant Run.
3. Uncheck the box next to Enable Instant Run.