Android has been the most popular operating system for quite some time now. Even with the fair share of competition from arch-rival iOS, Android has always managed to grab the top spot. As per reports by StatCounter, Android OS had a market share of 71.18% in 2020. This stat is evident enough to say that Android is the ruling king. 

The Android app development has soared high over time but it’s not an easy task. It requires complete dedication, a good set of libraries, and development tools to save time and build bug-free mobile apps. Therefore a good deal of Android libraries are being developed by the developers, so there is no need to start from scratch while developing an app. And the best practices of Android libraries can help you deliver great mobile apps effectively.

In this blog, we have curated a list of the 10 best Android libraries that you must check out in order to carry out an effortless Android app development.

10 Best Libraries for Android Developers

Here are the top 10 Android libraries that will help in your Android app development process.

1. Kotlin-math

It is an excellent library for Android. This library consists of a complete set of Kotlin APIs that help in making graphics math easier to write. These APIs are based on GLSL, i.e., OpenGL Shading Language and it makes porting of the code to and from shaders much easier.

2. Lottie

Lottie helps designers to create and ship beautiful animations without manually recreating them. This library supports all solids, shape layers, masks, alpha mattes, trim paths, and dash patterns and lets developers go forward and backward. The most important feature of this library is that it allows program animation to respond to any interaction.

3. Butterknife

Butterknife is a lightweight library developed by Jake Wharton. It is used to inject views into Android components using annotation processing. This library helps Android developers in making their code clearer and saves a lot of time. For instance, if you want to avoid writing repetitive code like “findViewByID(R.id.yourview)", ButterKnife will help you to bind strings, dimensions, click events, and much more.

4. MyLittleCanvas

It is one of the top Android libraries for developers. This library was created to ease the work with canvas on Android, but instead of methods, you can make use of objects now. One of its key features is a custom underline on a TextView. This library can also be used to implement TextShape, RectShape, LineShape, DrawableShape, PathShape, RoundRectShape, CircleShape with Canvas methods.

5. Zxing

Zxing is a library for barcode image processing. It is implemented using Java and supports other programming languages as well. Also used by Google, Zxing supports the 1D product, 1D industrial, and 2D barcodes. Also, this library is also helpful in creating the foundation of Android’s Barcode Scanner app.

6. Objectbox

ObjectBox is an object-oriented embedded database. It allows Android developers to devote their valuable time to what makes their Android applications exceptional and not just for storing and retrieving data. Moreover, this library is the right alternative for SQLite and is well suited for IoT. Objectbox also allows users to avoid various repetitive tasks, provides an easy to use interface, and is specially optimized for performance.

7. EventBus

During the development process of an Android app that has various active components interacting with each other, several problems come up. For solving this issue, EventBus was created. This library simplifies the communication between multiple components and separates event senders and receivers. Besides, it also performs well with activities, fragments, and background threads. It makes the code less complex and simpler by decoupling all the different classes that are involved with this library. Also, some of the advanced features of Eventbus include delivery threads and subscriber priorities.

8. Activity Recognition API

Using the Activity Recognition API users are able to recognize their current activity, for instance, if they're walking, driving, or standing still. Developers using this library can request activity updates by simply pressing the Request Updates button. Similarly to stop receiving updates the Remove Updates button comes in handy.

9. Easy Permissions

EasyPermissions is a library used to simplify basic system permissions login when targeting Android Marshmallow or higher. With the help of this library, you can see whether the app already has the required permissions.

10. Smart Lock for Passwords on Android

Smart Lock for Passwords on Android is a library that lets Android developers sign users into their app automatically by using the credentials they have saved. It can be easily integrated into any app by using Credentials API to retrieve saved credentials on sign-in. 

Conclusion

These were our picks for the top 10 best open-source Android libraries. Make sure to check out each one of them before starting your next Android project. With the use of these libraries, you will save a lot of time and effort.

Also, if you’re looking for an apt app development company for your Android app, you are just in the right place. Contact us today.