Software libraries are an amazing way to speed up coding for Android. Leverage the hard work of other developers to make your life easier. There are tons of amazing Android libraries out there, but how to find the right one? We put together this list to give you a start.
Animation
Android View Animations: A powerful animation library that makes it really easy to create various effects.
RecyclerView Animators: Allows you to use the RecyclerView class with several cool animations.
APIs
CloudRail: CloudRail helps you to integrate services via API much faster. It bundles multiple services like for example Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive into a single, unified API. Moreover it handles API updates for you and keeps the API towards your code consistent. Interfaces are available for Cloud Storage, Social, Payment and many more.
Retrofit: Retrofit by Square is a type safe REST client for Android. It basically turns an http API into a Java interface.
Charts
MPAndroidChart: A powerful library to generate charts on Android. Offers eight different chart types and a lot of gestures.
AndroidCharts: An easy way to create Charts, with customizable features
Database
SQLBrite : Creates a wrapper around SQLiteOpenHelper and ContentResolver to use stream semantics in queries.
Sugar ORM: Easy way to work with a SQLite database without the need to write SQL queries.
Data Structures
Eclipse Collections: Collections framework for Java to eg put iteration methods on the container types.
Date & Time
TimesSquare for Android Simple and standalone widget to pick a date from a calendar view.
Material Calendar View Android’s CalendarView ported to Material design.
Dependencies
Dagger A fast way to do dependency injections for Android
Files
Android-FilePicker: A photopicker to select pictures or documents out of a nice list
Material File Picker: A simple fiel picker in Material design
Functional Programing
Retrolambda: A way to use Lambdas on Java version 7
Gestures
Sensey: The easy way to add gestures to your Android application
Android 3D Touch – PeekView: A way to “peek” into content similar to 3D Touch on iOS
Bluetooth
Android-BluetoothSPPLibrary: Hardware developer? This is an easy way to use the Bluetooth Serial Port Profile
RxAndroidBle: Easily handle Bluetooth Low Energy
Camera
CameraFilter: A realtime camera filter using OpenGL shaders
Material Camera: A fast and easy camera framework for Android
Location
ReactiveLocation: Small but very useful wrapper of the Google Play API to get the location
Smart Location Library: Another library to simplify the usage of location providers
Layout
Android Swipe Layout: Provides swipe functionality for objects. For example swipe to left to delete it.
FlexboxLayout : Brings a box layout to Android as you might know it from CSS
Logging
Logger: Simple logger for Android
Hugo: The classic: Annotation triggered method call logging
Maps
AirMapView : View abstraction for Google Maps API. Especially interesting for apps without Google Play Services
Useful utilities for Google Maps like heat maps or marker clustering
Audio
Music Player: A complete music player including nice UI
RxAndroidAudio : Encapsulates the Android Audio API with Rx support
RxAndroidAudio
GIF
android-gif-drawable: Use View and Drawable with animated GIFs
GifView : Another library for playing GIFs on Android with View
Image
uCrop: A cool library to crop images on Android
Glide: Media management and image loading library for Android
Video
VideoPlayerManager: A library to help you with the Android MediaPlayer class
Easy Video Player: An easy to use video player which can be used via view
Messaging
Chateau: Framework to provide chat functionality in your Android app
Networking
OkHttp: HTTP client for Android
AndroidAsync: A low level network protocol library
Push Notifications
PubNub: A commercial service to handle push notifications
Gandalf: Inform your users about new updates or maintenance
Payments
Android In-App Billing v3 Library: Easily handle in-app payments via the Android v3 API
Checkout: Another library for in-app purchases
Security
Sodium: Easy way to do encryption, decryption, signatures and hashing
PiracyChecker: Protect your app from being pirated using Googles LVL
Text
Ticker: UI component to display scrolling text
MaterialEditText: Text input in Material Design
Font
fontbinding: Custom fonts in XML using data binding
Calligraphy An easy way to use custom fonts on your Android app
User Interface
Material Design Android Library: Use Googles Material Design in Apps as of Android 2.2
Material: Another Library to bring Material Design to older apps
Activity Indicator
AppIntro: Create cool intros for your apps similar to Googles original apps
LolliPin: Need a pin code in your app? Here is a library for that
Buttons
Android-Bootstrap: Use Bootstrap specifications to eg create buttons in your app
Android Morphing Button: Buttons for Android which can change size and shape to show a “ok” message for example
Form
Vertical Stepper Form Library: Create forms in Material Design
Keyboard
KeyboardVisibilityEvent: Easy way to show and hide the keyboard
AndroidKeyboardWatcher: Small library to track open / close events from keyboard
Menu
BottomBar: A view component which provides a bottom navigation bar in Material Design
Side Menu Add a nice side menu with several categories to you app
Rating
Android-Rate: A simple library to remind users to rate your app after a few days
SimpleRatingBar: UI component for a rating based on stars
Slider
SlidingMenu: Easily create slide-in menus for your app
MaterialDrawer: A flexible and easy drawer library for Android
To be continued! We hope that this list and CloudRail helps you to build amazing Android apps.
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