Apps on the big screen part III: Debugging on an Android TV

How cool would it be if you can debug your TV app on a real device! For tvOS all it takes is a provision profile and an USB-C to USB-A cable to connect the Apple TV 4 device with your MacBook. How to enable the debugging option on a real Android TV is less obvious. It starts with selecting the right Android TV device.

Android 5.0 set-top boxes are hardly available in my part of the world and getting one from Ali Express is not an option, because the delivery times are too long and I do not have that much patience. So I decided to get myself a TV running on Android.

1. Pick the right Android TV

First of all, if you have plans to develop apps for Android TV and want to be able to debug them then it is important to decide which brand and model you pick. Previously I have made the mistake to chose a Philips TV, the 32PFK6500 to be exactly. It was the only 32 inch model that was available, which made it the perfect development TV, or so I thought.

It turned out to be not such a good idea. There is no way to debug and test your apps on this or other recent Philips Android TVs, basically because of Philips security policy. Yes, you can unlock the developers menu, but you will never be allowed to connect the ADB. This makes debugging impossible.

Too bad! It is a nice TV and I really enjoyed the Ambilight experience. This TV is probably great if you just want to watch TV and use some apps, but it is not really suitable for app development, although there seems to be a workaround to get your app at least tested through the Google Play alpha- and beta distribution mechanism.

Tip of the day: If you want to return your smart TV to the shop then do not forget to restore it to the factory settings. You may have entered your google account and others details that you do want to erase first. Unlike me, do this before you put everything back into the box ;)

So I went back to the shop and exchanged the Philips TV for a Sony Bravia TV, the 43W80xC one. With this television I have made a new attempt; this time with success!

Android Studio 2: Much faster and enhanced testing support

Android 2.0 comes with some great new features. Building and deploying apps will become much faster. The new Instant Run feature for example allows you to quickly see the changes you have made.

The new emulator will run much faster and it will come with enhanced testing support. The emulator will support Google Play Services and phone calls, low battery conditions and GPS locations can be simulated. It will support dragging and dropping APK files, just like Genymotion does.

More speed, that is what Android developers need. And with Android Studio 2.0, which is current available as a preview in the canary channel, speed is what we get.

Enable Instant Run

With Instant Run you build and deploy an app to an emulated or to a physical device just once and then as code needs to be changed, it will only take a few seconds before you can see the changes in the running app.

To see the new stuff for yourself you can grab an Android Studio 2.0 copy from the canary channel and enable the Instant Run feature for your existing apps.

From the Android Studio menu choose Preferences (Android Studio for OSX). In the Preferences dialog expand the Build, execution and deployment option and choose Instant run. You probably need to click on the Update project link to enable this new feature. In my case I also had to update the Build tools and to resync the project.

Once you have done that you are good to go. Run and deploy on the app using the Run button.

While your app is running you can modify your code. For example change the text of a toast being displayed in your app. As a small demo I have modified one of the recipes from my book but you can try this with any app of course.

Now you just hit the Run button again. A toast will be displayed to notify you about the changes. Indeed, we do no longer need to restart the activity to see our changes.

Note! Instant Run is a great feature but it is not (yet) supporting all kinds of changes. Some of these limitations are known, such as changing annotations, static fields or methods. Other kind of changes, such as modifications in the layout, should be supported I guess but I was not able to make it work.

It might because the project that I am using for testing this is having multiple flavors? Or it could be because this is just a preview of Android Studio 2.0 and maybe I need to be a little bit more patient and wait for a more stable release.

Conclusion

Android Studio 2.0 is focused on speed and better testing support. I think that is exactly what Android app developers deserve after struggling so many times with speed (in particular with Eclipse in the old less good days) and with the many fragmentation challenges we still have today.

Just like the Android OS itself Android Studio also has become mature and that is great news!

Further reading

• 1. Android Studio 2.0 preview
• 2. Android Studio 2.0 on TechCrunch
• 3. The new emulator in Android Studio 2.0 is 50 times faster than before
• 4. Google unveils Android Studio 2.0 with Instant Run, faster Android emulator, and new GPU profiler
• 5. Android Dev summit

ADB Plugin for Android Studio

Android Studio comes with many interesting plugins. Under the Plugins section of the Preferences dialog in Android Studio (for OSX) you can find some of them and you can browse for additional ones using the Browse repositories button.

On the Android Studio Plugin Repository page (or on GitHub) you will find all available plugins. Recently I have found a nice plugin for Android Studio (and Intellij IDEA) that could help you to speed up your daily Android development.

ADB Not Responding - Wait More or Kill adb or Restart

Does the line above looks familiar? To restart the ADB I always used the command prompt for that. Using this plugin created by Philippe Breault we could perform this and other tasks from within Android Studio.

In addition to restarting the ADB it can also clear the app data, uninstall an app or just kill it. After installing ADB Idea appears under the Tools, Android menu but as Philip suggests on GitHub you can use the Ctrl + Shift + A (For Windows Ctrl + Alt + Shift + A ) short cut.

Short cut for all

By the way, you can also use the Cmd + Shift + A short cut and type adb to look up adb commands or use this short cut to look up any command.

Conclusion

Well, what else can I say about it? It is a nice little tool. Thank you Philippe Breault for that !

Further reading...

• 1.Android Studio plugin repository
• 2.ADB Idea on GitHub