[android] What is the best IDE to develop Android apps in?

I am about to start developing an android app and need to get an IDE. Eclipse and the android eclipse plugin appears to be the natural choice. However I am familiar with intelliJ and re-sharper so I would prefer use intelliJ.

Has anyone used https://code.google.com/archive/p/idea-android/? Is this any good?

Should I just bite the bullet and learn Eclipse?

I advise Android bundle for TextMate: https://github.com/nesterow/Android.tmbundle It's lightweight and easy to use. There is no intellisense, but actually it just makes you remember namespaces better. :)

Eclipse and Netbeans are both horrible slow, and I'ts a miracle that even the serious developers has been sticking with it for years, not even try to stick with a better product.

Java as platform is a shame when it comes to non-handheld platforms (win,mac,linux) and if anyone are going to develop on the platform I say do what else but do not use Java at all. For mobility it's probably has a kind of good luck here, as the systems are more down-scaled.

As far I know, there aren't any existing IDE for Java which aren't iself written in a Java environment. This is horrible because Java is messing up the desktop environment.

I'm willing to spend hours on google to find an Java IDE/Editor which are capable for android projects but will use a native environment for itself.

Of the existing IDEs, Ted Neward ranks them this way:

Best: IntelliJ IDEA

Second: Netbeans

Third: Eclipse

He seems to think that Eclipse throws up a lot of "friction"; hard to say what that means.

Edit, years later: After attempting to use Eclipse/Aptana for node development and using JetBrains products for node and ruby development I would absolutely start with IntelliJ IDEA and give that a try for the 30 day trial.

Eclipse is the best IDE. It easy to setup android and debug applications in eclipse

you can use Juno, i just find it. it's fastest than Helios that i worked with that. you can try it.

Eclipse is not that hard to learn (I use both Eclipse and NetBeans, and I switch back and forth pretty effortlessly). If you're going to be learning Android development from the start, I can recommend Hello, Android, which I just finished. It shows you exactly how to use all the features of Eclipse that are useful for developing Android apps. There's also a brief section on getting set up to develop from the command line and from other IDEs.

I've been using IntelliJ IDEA for the last 12 months now as my main IDE, but I am often forced to use Eclipse as well. So when I have to work in Eclipse I start biting my nails. I will sum up my pros and cons.

Eclipse pros:
- visual editor. IDEA has one as well, but it's rather primitive. I suspect that this feature will soon be deleted as IDEA will improve its editor.
- many projects into one right pane (this is also my personal con as I like IDEA's one-project-per-pane thing)
- faster compiles Android projects. IDEA has made its compilation process faster, so I also soon expect to delete this Eclipse pro

IDEA pros:
- faster intellisense (if you like Resharper, then you know what I am talking about)
- smarter autocomplete - my friend and I decided to write the same class. I finished before him simply because IDEA faster reacts to my wishes
- incredibly smart - do not know what to do? just press Ctrl+Shift+Space and IDEA will tell you what should come there. It also recognizes naming scheme to if you're filling name object, it will first display getName method.
- will add more as I remember of them

IDEA cons:
- Still the only con is that if you open Eclipse Android project and edit any XML layout file, Eclipse will no longer be able to display edited file into its visual layout editor. This has not been fixed as of this day and it's IDEA's bug as it somehow messes the XML.

Bottom line: if you're a person who does not see advantages of ReSharper in .NET (and we all coded in .NET), then you'll probably stick to Eclipse. It's official Android IDE and you believe it's the best.
If you liked ReSharper and want to code faster, then you'll appreciate IDEA and will stick to it forever.

For me the best is Motodev is a Eclipse plugin developed by Motorola.

You can also develop rich UI filled Android applications using Adobe AIR. If you plan to go that route then Flex Builder Burrito is the best IDE. Take a look at this post as to how easy it is to build an AIR4Android app http://blog.air4android.com/?p=13

If you haven't installed Eclipse yet, I'd recommend Motorola's MotoDev Studio. It does a lot of the annoying little tasks like set up your Android environment along with your paths, and adds a lot of nice built in functionality to Eclipse.

Even if you've already installed Eclipse, you can add it as a plugin (I haven't tried that myself). It is by Motorola, so they have some Motorola centric functionality as well, such as the ability to add your app to the Motorola market. Anyway if you're interested, give it a shot: http://developer.motorola.com/docstools/motodevstudio/

I Feel Eclipse IDE is more suitable for android applications rather than other IDEs. Because its providing us more than five perspectives which will make our project flexible and ease.You may try Eclipse ides starts with 3.6 and above will provide you better performance.

Eclipse_jee_indigo
Eclipse_java_indigo
Eclipse_classic

The above eclipses are belongs to the version3.7.2 which are all latest and supports all kind of access.

I think intellij is the best option for android. i have used both eclipse and intellij and found intellij is much easier to use with android as compared to eclipse because of these reasons :-

Intellij provides a built-in support for android and you don't have to configure it as you need to do with eclipse. Intellij gives you auto-lookup feature which is really important for developer like us to increase our productivity. And if we talk about eclipse you have to type each and every method, classname etc on your own. (May be eclipse has this feature too but i never found it and trust me i tried to find it like anything) Its much more user friendly and easy to use than eclipse. I hope it will help you and other members of stack overflow to decide which IDE is best for Android development.

My personal choice is Intellij.

EDIT

But there is one thing i love about eclipse and that is visual layout creator. You can use drag and drop technique to create a layout and eclipse will automatically generate an XML file for you just like XCODE.

EDIT

Good News!! Intellij added a new feature which shows how your app's view is going to look like. It doesn't work exactly like Eclipse but it will give you a good idea about your layout.

My personal choice is still Intellij because it helps me to type faster than eclipse.

EDIT

Ok guys these days i am using eclipse juno and found its kind of buggy and slow. So if you still want to use eclipse better stick to some older version. And finally i am able to found how to enable auto-complete in eclipse. Below is a small tutorial.

Eclipse -> Preference - > Java -> Editor -> Content Assist -> Auto Activation

Now put following in the three given boxes

Auto Activation delay(ms) - 0
Auto activation triggers for java - .(abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Auto activation triggers for javadoc - @#

You are now good to go. Happy coding.

EDIT

As now Google has adopted Intellij for their own Android dev tool, there is no question now about which one is better. Intellij is far far better than eclipse. And i switched back to Intellij and it feels like i am back home!! :D

An IDE which supports Android development is Processing for Android: http://wiki.processing.org/w/Android. Processing is its own language but it's easy to learn. Processing for Android requires the JDK and Android SDK to be installed but runs on its own. It runs on Linux, Mac OSX and Windows (on a side note: one can develop a desktop app in Processing and then compile it to target any of these operating systems). Its development is ongoing but it works. It's especially good for quickly sketching up an idea and running it on your Android phone (even if you plan to develop it further in another IDE).

There is an active support forum here: http://forum.processing.org/android-processing.

Eclipse is the most widely used development environment for the Android platform. The reason is that even Google itself providing the plug-in to be added in eclipse and start developing the applications. I have tried installing it from the eclipse market place, it is very easy and simple to create the android application. set up also very simple.

If you do android native code development using NDK, give Visual Studio a try. (Not a typo!!!) Check out: http://ian-ni-lewis.blogspot.com/2011/01/its-like-coming-home-again.html

and: http://code.google.com/p/vs-android/

I am a huge supporter of using the environment that is most familiar to you. However this isn't always the best option. In some cases, a different environment can result in (far?) greater efficency in the long run.

In this particular case I suspect that sticking with what you already know is a good option, but someone starting new would benifit from the easy setup and sdk/ndk integration offered by eclipse. I also don't know how available geolocation manipulation (or phone state manipulation - ie incoming call etc) is in other IDE's, but integration within eclipse feels seamless.

AIDE is a fun option that I use while traveling or when I don't feel like sitting at my desk all the time. It is an extrodinarly well put together IDE that runs on Android, compiles Android appications, and then lets you install, all without touching a computer. It includes a logcat readout, syntax highlighting and some git compatibility as well. Obviously you don't have a lot of screen real estate available and things can get cluttered or you can't see everything you want to at once, but for quick touchups or early in a project it is more than adequate.

Unfortunately, there is no perfect IDE for Android. Eclipse has more features as it is the only IDE google developed plugin for. However, if you are just like me, tired of crashes and weired debug/develop mode swithes, Use Netbeans plugin from http://nbandroid.kenai.com.

All of the full-featured Java IDE's are good and share all of the same concepts and main features. If you can find your way around one you can probably do the same for any other without much trouble.

EDIT: Google gave us a wonderful gift with the new and free AndroidStudio is very good. I highly recommend it over Eclipse.

One good system is Basic4Android - great for anyone familiar with Basic,

• Includes a visual designer for screen layouts
• Can connect to the emulators available as part of the Android SDK
• Makes it relatively easy to develop programs.