Release updates archive


Android Studio 3.5 Canary 3 is now available in the Canary and Dev channels.

If you have Android Studio set to receive updates on the  Canary or Dev channel, you can get the update by choosing ...


Android Studio 3.4 Beta 3 is now available in the Beta channel.

If you have Android Studio set up to receive updates on the  Beta channel, you can get the update by choosing ...

Emulator 28.0.23 is now available in the Stable channel. Change:

  • Host audio input disabled by default. A post on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/aipv3i/til_the_android_emulator_responds_to_ok_google/) detailed how the guest Android OS would always be using the host microphone's audio, and thereby allowing "Ok Google" to work unexpectedly. We're quite sorry about this and will work with the Android team to make sure hotword detection is disabled in the system image as well. In the near term, to address this:
    • Actual host audio data is now squelched by default. When the guest uses the microphone, silence is passed over instead of the host's audio.
    • If it's desired to use the host audio data, there is now a toggle in the UI for that: Extended Controls > Microphone > "Virtual microphone uses host audio input"
    • The toggle reverts to disabling host audio whenever the emulator is restarted.
  • Note on CPU usage. In Project Marble investigations, we've noticed that high CPU usage on the emulator generally falls into the following categories:
    • At idle: Automatic app updates in Play Store images. We found that at random intervals, all apps installed get updated, even when the user is not logged in. During the process, CPU usage is driven to the number of cores x 100% (typically ~400%) in GMSCore and dex2oat. This can be mitigated by disabling auto app updates in the Play Store app.
    • At idle: Hotword detection. When on the home screen and without any app foregrounded, there can be a great deal of CPU usage (~25% with spikes to 50%). This is because of hotword detection always pinging the host. Note that this is not addressed by disabling host audio input, because the cost is dominated by the time taken to travel to the guest from the host. However, this can be mitigated by revoking microphone permissions for the Google app.
    • While active, sometimes at idle: Animations. The third source of high CPU usage is animations. We have found that by optimizing the graphics driver stack we can also reduce CPU usage here even when the emulator is not idle. We will be rolling out graphics driver optimizations incrementally as part of Project Marble.

Emulator 28.1.4 is now available in the Canary and Dev channels. Changes:
  • Host audio input disabled by default. A post on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/aipv3i/til_the_android_emulator_responds_to_ok_google/) detailed how the guest Android OS would always be using the host microphone's audio, and thereby allowing "Ok Google" to work unexpectedly. We're quite sorry about this and will work with the Android team to make sure hotword detection is disabled in the system image as well. In the near term, to address this:
    • Actual host audio data is now squelched by default. When the guest uses the microphone, silence is passed over instead of the host's audio.
    • If it's desired to use the host audio data, there is now a toggle in the UI for that: Extended Controls > Microphone > "Virtual headset uses host audio input". The toggle reverts to disabling host audio whenever the emulator is restarted.
  • Note on CPU usage. In Project Marble investigations, we've noticed that high CPU usage on the emulator generally falls into the following categories:
    • At idle: Automatic app updates in Play Store images. We found that at random intervals, all apps installed get updated, even when the user is not logged in. During the process, CPU usage is driven to the number of cores x 100% (typically ~400%) in GMSCore and dex2oat. This can be mitigated by disabling auto app updates in the Play Store app.
    • At idle: Hotword detection. When on the home screen and without any app foregrounded, there can be a great deal of CPU usage (~25% with spikes to 50%). This is because of hotword detection always pinging the host. Note that this is not addressed by disabling host audio input, because the cost is dominated by the time taken to travel to the guest from the host, not the use of the host's audio itself. This can be mitigated by revoking microphone permissions for the Google app.
    • While active, sometimes at idle: Animations. The third source of high CPU usage is animations. We have found that by optimizing the graphics driver stack we can also reduce CPU usage here even when the emulator is not idle. We will be rolling out graphics driver optimizations incrementally as part of Project Marble.
    • While active: Video playback. Another source of high CPU usage is when video is playing. We are working to reduce the overhead of video decoding.
    • We welcome any further feedback on emulator resource usage and are working with teams in Android to better address the issues with app updates and hotword detection.


Android Studio 3.5 Canary 2 is now available in the Canary and Dev channels.

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Android Studio 3.4 Beta 2 is now available in the Beta channel.

If you have Android Studio set up to receive updates on the Beta channel, you can get the update by choosing ...

Emulator 28.1.3 is now available in the Canary and Dev channels. Changes:
  • Enhanced Bugreport Info. In Project Marble, we want to do better to hunt down emulator issues that are due to specific hardware and AVD setups. To address this, when sending a bug report through the emulator Bugreport UI, the AVD config and CPU/GPU/RAM-specific specs are now automatically inlined. The emulator bug report information is also available from the console (assuming console auth token is used):
    • telnet localhost 5554
    • avd bugreport
  • Performance Stats Page. In Project Marble, we're working to reduce emulator CPU/RAM usage. As part of this effort, we've added a page to the Extended Controls panel, "Performance Stats", that shows the current CPU usage of the QEMU main loop and vCPU threads. This helps make excessive emulator CPU usage more visible while also giving app developers a quick way to see overall Android CPU usage. As Project Marble proceeds, we will add more real-time metrics to this page.
    • If you are seeing excessive levels of CPU usage from the emulator, especially when the emulator should be in an idle state such as on the home screen, please file a bug with a screenshot of the Performance Stats page, and also try to include the output of adb shell top.


Android Studio 3.5 Canary 1 is now available in the Canary and Dev channels.

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Android Studio 3.4 Beta 1 is now available in the Beta channel.

If you have Android Studio set up to receive updates on the Beta channel, you can get the update by choosing ...

Android Studio 3.3 is now available in the Stable channel. You can  download it here.

For an overview of what's new in this release, see either the  release notes ...

Emulator 28.1.2 is now available in the Canary and Dev channels. Change:
  • Fixed out of bounds memory access when processing compressed textures.

Emulator 28.1.1 is now available in the Canary and Dev channels. Change:
  • Fixed issue where the pulseaudio backend on Linux would spin and take up an entire CPU core in some situations, such as during emulator pause.


Android Studio 3.4 Canary 10 is now available in the Canary and Dev channels.

If you have Android Studio set to receive updates on the  Canary or Dev channel, you can get the update by choosing ...