Android OS accounts for a market share of 71.18% in 2020, according to StatCounter. This figure shows the dominance of Android in the market. Hence, many developers have chosen to work on Android apps. But this needs total devotion, a collection of libraries, and Android development tools to save ample time and create bug-free apps.
Android libraries are being built by the entire community of
Android app developers. And using it in the best ways possible can open plenty of opportunity doors for you. This article lists 10 best Android libraries that you must look into to create your next project hassle-free and in less time. Let’s begin!
Top Libraries For Android Development
1. Retrofit
For Android and Java, this is a type-safe HTTP application built by Square. Android Retrofit is the best library that allows you to connect to HTTP-based API services from your Android apps. It uses the OkHttp library’s core functionality, including a handful of features, while removing the boilerplate code.
This one is user-friendly to receive data structures other than JSON, for instance, Jackson and SimpleXML.
One can easily manipulate headers & endpoints, add a request body and query parameters, & select request methods, all with annotations in Retrofit.
2. Dagger 2
Dagger sets itself apart from other libraries. Dependency injector libraries help to render smaller elements to other models and help them remain intact with one another. While building larger apps, it would be tough to tackle dependency injection. Dagger will save you in this scenario since it develops a dependency injection graph in compile-time through annotation processors.
3. ButterKnife
Butterknife, a view binding library, makes use of annotation to produce boilerplate code for Android developers. This Android library is built by Jake Wharton and makes your code clearer than before.
With this renowned view binding library, creators can save time to script repetitive coding lines. If you wish to avoid writing repetitive code, Butterknife is super handy for developers to bind strings, drawables, dimens, click events, and more.
Instead of writing the setOnClickListener method for each view, you can use @OnClick annotation to click events for one or multiple views. Using a ButterKnife library is a lot simpler for your Android project.
4. MyLittleCanvas
This is one of the top Android libraries for developers. The library was to enable work with canvas on Android; you can also use objects instead of methods now. This Android library is utilized to accomplish features like a custom underline on a TextView. You can also apply RoundRectShape TextShape, RectShape, LineShape, PathShape, DrawableShape, and CircleShape with Canvas methods.
5. ExpansionPanel
This is another enriched library from Florent Champigny that offers developers the application of Expansion Panels. This library allows you to set-up various expansion layouts to open only 1 at a time.
This library is easily comprehensible & the project comes with a sample app so that developers can check. Also, the complete code of this library is under Apache-2.0 license & the sample app can be acquired on Google Play.
6. Room
Room makes it simple to build offline apps with the official ORM Android library. Also, you use the full power of SQLite for managing data. Room can be easily understood as it utilizes simple SQL annotations, and syntax & much easier than other ORMs with complex APIs. This even supports Rx and functions really well.
7. Glide
Glide displays a nice API that lets you transform the image the way you want. It is yet another popular image loader and one of the best new Android libraries for developers, managed by Bumptech. Not only this, but it is also suggested directly by Google.
Glide renders animated GIF support while managing image loading & caching and helps in decoding, fetching, displaying images, video calls, and GIFs. It even includes a flexible API enabling developers to plug in any network stack, as its default stack is HttpUrlConnection.
This library mainly aims at making the scrolling procedure for any list of pictures as seamless as it can be. It is also effective if you need to fetch, resize, or display a remote photo.
8. Zxing
Zxing is a barcode photo processing library. This library is applied using Java & supports other programming languages. Moreover, it supports the 1D industrial, 1D product, and 2D barcodes.
Google uses Zxing to acquire millions of barcodes on the web indexable. It also helps to establish the Android Barcode Scanner app base, which is merged into Book Search & Google Product.
9. Lottie
This is one of the Android animation libraries that reads Adobe After Effects animations with Bodymovin & provides them natively on mobile. This library helps designers create and ship stunning animations without an engineer completely recreating them by hand. Presently, it supports solids, masks, trim paths, shape layers, and dash patterns.
The library also permits the developer to go ahead backward, and it allows the program animation to answer any interaction.
10. Activity Recognition API
Activity Recognition API lets a user identify their present activity like driving, standing, or walking. App developers who use this library can request updates by pressing the “Request Updates” button & stop receiving updates with the “Remove Updates” button.
The sample also makes use of an IntentService to process detected activity changes that are sent with ActivityRecognitionResultobjects. The IntentService will receive a list of possibly seen activities & broadcast them via a BroadcastReceiver.
The Endnote
These are the top 10 Android libraries you must absolutely look out for. These libraries will save you plenty of time and energy that you invest in building an Android app from the start. Moreover, your Android app will be improved with the best android app development libraries so take your time to explore these.
But if you have any questions on the Android development process, launching an app on Play Store, or confusion about these Android libraries, or the cost to develop an Android app, you can connect with our Hyperlink team.