Preview Channels

Android Studio has a built-in preview update mechanism. The IDE connects regularly to the update server and will present a popup at startup when a new version is available.
Android Studio categorizes updates using "channels". There are 4 channels available:
  • Canary channel: Canary builds are the bleeding edge, released about weekly. While these builds do get tested, they are still subject to bugs, as we want people to see what's new as soon as possible. This is not recommended for production development.
  • Dev channel: Dev builds are hand-picked older canary builds that survived the test of time. It should be updated roughly bi-weekly or monthly.
  • Beta channel: When we reach a beta milestone for the next version of Android Studio, we post the beta builds here. When the version is stable, the beta channel contains the stable version until the next version's beta.
  • Stable channel: Contains the most recent stable version of Android Studio. 
You can download the full installations of each preview channel here: Canary, Dev, Beta. For the latest stable release, you should download Android Studio from http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html. 

To then configure which channel to use for automatic updates:
  1. Open the Settings dialog (File > Settings on Windows/Linux, or Android Studio > Preferences on Mac). 
  2. In the left panel, select Appearance & Behavior > System Settings > Updates, then select a channel from the drop-down list.




Using Multiple Android Studio Versions

It's possible to have multiple versions of Android Studio installed simultaneously. When we offer canary builds (or even beta builds) of the next version of the IDE, you may want to install the new version without replacing your existing stable install.

Android Studio stores its settings in version specific folders; the exact locations depend on the operating system (and the versions of the IDE), but for example, if you have both Android Studio 1.5.1 and Android Studio 2.0 Preview 1 installed, these will consult settings in
~/.AndroidStudio1.5
and
~/.AndroidStudioPreview2.0
respectively.

Therefore, once you've installed the two versions, you can use them, even side by side, and they should not interfere with each other. (Note however that newer versions of the may change some of the configuration data in your projects (such as code style settings in .idea).

Note that on OSX, you typically install by just dragging the "Android Studio" app from the DMG folder to your Applications folder. Doing so will cause it to replace the previous install with the new install. To avoid this, rename your existing app first, for example from "Android Studio" to "Android Studio 1.5".

Deleting Older Settings Folders

Once you are done with an older version, you can delete the settings folder for that version. This can free up a significant amount of disk space; particularly the index caches.



Accepting Android Studio Updates

When an update is available, you'll see a balloon notification in the IDE.

Two important known issues:
  • The first time, you'll see a dialog that asks you to accept this channel. You need to press "More info" to accept this channel, otherwise you won't get notified about updates. 
  • If you press the "Ignore This Update" button, there is currently no mechanism available to revert that decision and Android Studio will never tell you about that update ever again.
We'll revisit this to make it a bit more understandable.


TL;DR: you need to press "More Info..." on that dialog, then check for updates again.

 Later on, you'll just see the update information dialog, which details information on the patch available, its size and its channel:

 

The options are:
  • Update and restart will automatically download the patch, close Android Studio, apply it and restart Studio.
  • Release Notes opens a web page with releases notes.
  • Remind Me Later closes this dialog. Updates are checked daily so it will notify you again in 24 hours or so.
  • Ignore This Update puts the specific build number on a list to be skipped. There is no undo mechanism for that nor any UI to edit the exception list (but there are workarounds.) The update mechanism will ask again for the next update though.


SDK Manager: Tools Previews

From time to time the Android SDK team will release previews for the Android SDK tools -- these let developers get an idea of the future changes to the tools and provide us with early feedback. We try to make sure they are reasonably stable releases. 
There are two kind of previews that we can release:
  • From the SDK Manager, developers can get previews of Tools and Platform-Tools packages.
  • From the Eclipse update site, developers can get previews of the ADT plugin for Eclipse.
Please see the details below on how to configure your system to get these and how to "roll" back to the stable versions.

To find out the latest features available in the SDK tools, check the Recent Changes page.
To enable Tools and Platform-Tools previews in the SDK Manager:
  • Open the SDK Manager, typically by running the android tool.
  • Open Tools > Options...
    • For Mac OSX, use SDK Manager > Preferences...
      NOTE: Due to a bug the SDK Manager may not show a menu. If that is the case, switch to a different application and then return; that should fix the menu.
  • Check "Enable Preview Tools"

  • Once you close the options dialog, the SDK Manager will display both the latest stable version of the tools and the latest preview available.

  • To install the preview version of the tools, simply select the "Android SDK Tools" package in the "Tools (Preview Channel)" section and click install. This replace the existing tools by the preview version.
  • If you later decide you want to go back to the previous version, simply select the "Android SDK Tools" package in the "Tools" section and click install. This will replace the tools.
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