Android Studio replaced Eclipse as Google’s main IDE for Android development.
Before Android Studio, Google’s officially supported workflow commonly used Eclipse with the Android Development Tools (ADT) plugin. Google announced Android Studio at Google I/O in May 2013, presenting it as an IDE designed specifically for Android and based on JetBrains’ IntelliJ IDEA platform. Android Studio reached its first stable 1.0 release in December 2014.
The transition was gradual rather than an overnight technical replacement. Eclipse ADT continued to be used during the early Android Studio period, but Google ended official support for Eclipse ADT at the end of 2015. Android Studio then became the officially supported environment, integrating Android-specific features such as Gradle-based builds, an emulator, layout and resource tools, debugging, profiling, and device testing.
A frequent quiz trap is IntelliJ IDEA: Android Studio is based on IntelliJ IDEA, but IntelliJ IDEA itself was not the IDE that Android Studio replaced in Google’s Android workflow. Another historical distinction is that Java was initially central to Android development; Google later made Kotlin its preferred language in 2019.