Good IDE/code editor for developing Android apps with Kotlin?
from sbeak@sopuli.xyz to programming@programming.dev on 15 Dec 2025 08:58
https://sopuli.xyz/post/38154611
from sbeak@sopuli.xyz to programming@programming.dev on 15 Dec 2025 08:58
https://sopuli.xyz/post/38154611
Hi all, much of what I have read recommends Android Studio to create Android apps, but I’m a bit wary since it’s developed by Google. Are there any other good alternatives that are ideally open-source?
I am currently running Fedora 43 KDE, and I use VSCodium as my main code editor, mostly Python at the moment. Are there any plugins I could use to enable Kotlin support/specific Android dev stuff in VSCodium?
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Android Studio is a fork of JetBrains’ IntelliJ. You could use the latter, which has support for Kotlin and Android, but I’m unsure how feature complete it is compared to Android Studio (JetBrains say “includes the Android Studio’s functionality”^1)
I’ll tty that then, and see how it goes.
Another alternative that I know of is Rider which supports Android apps with .NET. But it’s not OSS nor supports Kotlin. I’d like to see an alternative as well, but I fear unless Jetbrains creates something else (and most probably they won’t) there will be no other options.
You’re developing for a google platform. Doent really matter if the IDE is backed by google. and you have a LOT more to do with google if you are developing for android. The platform is locked in to google. Get used to it.
You’re arguing that on Lemmy, where a lot more than average people use a custom ROM or app store.
I use custom ROM and fdroid myself. It’s still a google product. Specially if you have ever developed for android you know you just have to play Google’s games. The same way if you use Java you have to play Oracle’s games. Or if you want to be an aws engineer (or whatever they are called) you have to… You get the gist.
Google has deeo control over tge android ecosystem and the only reason it’s somewhat open source currently is the GPL licensing of the linux kernel. And they are limiting it day by day, while it’s getting harder to install custom roms on newer phones.
The smartphone industry is absolutely garbage. Android and ios aren’t very different.
and btw, open source doesn’t mean FOSS. It just means they couldn’t find a legal way to make it fully proprietary.
Android (currently) is an open-source operating system. Just because you develop for it doesn’t mean your reliant on Google, or have to interact with them in any capacity.
If Google decides to, it can remove anything from AOSP, as it has done countless of times. Android is deeply controlled by Google.
You’re going to be sabotaging yourself if you don’t use Android Studio.
But Android Studio sabotages you into using Play dependent stuff.
Wait what? How?
It’s developed by jetbrains. The SDK, which you would need for any development, it built by Google.
What are you wary of?
Nit picking: why use VSCodium? It’s better to use Eclipse Theia instead, which is built from scratch and runs its own extension repository.
…and for the old timers: NO! Eclipse Theia is NOT the Eclipse you’re thinking of
It’s what I’m used to and it’s got a good selection of extensions that are useful to me.
VS Codium uses open vsx, which is the extension registry built and run by the Eclipse team. Whatever extensions you’re using will also work on Theia.
oh, that’s pretty cool actually :0
After a quick search, Eclipse “Theia” has a whole load of AI marketing and is the alternative to “GitHub CoPilot, Cursor, etc”. No thanks.
That’s just AI marketing bandwagon crap, probably fishing for funding. The editor has been around for a few years, and it had nothing to do with AI until very recently.
mmm ok
I am not well informed, but I would expect that a lot of the tools that come with Android Studio can be installed as separate CLI utilities you can control from the command line, but maybe I am wrong. You will get worse IDE integration than with Android studio, that’s for sure.