For the Eclipse vs Android Studio question, the short version is that Android Studio is the only IDE Google develops for Android. Anything that ships on Google Play belongs there. Eclipse is a fine pick for Java work outside Android.
Google formally ended development and support for the Android Developer Tools (ADT) plugin in Eclipse on 2 November 2016 (Android Developers Blog, 2016). That came after a 2015 announcement that both would stop at the end of that year. Andmore, the Eclipse Foundation’s successor project, was archived in October 2024.
Eclipse itself is still active. The 2026-06 release added Java 26 support (ADT Magazine, 2026), and 2026-09 followed on 9 September 2026. The missing piece is Android tooling that anyone maintains.
Is Eclipse still supported for Android app development?
No. Google ended development and official support for the Android Developer Tools (ADT) plugin in Eclipse, and the shutdown finished on 2 November 2016 with Android Studio 2.2 (Android Developers Blog, 2016).
As a Java IDE, Eclipse is fine. The 2026-06 release added Java 26 support (ADT Magazine, June 2026), and 2026-09 followed on 9 September 2026. Nobody at Google maintains the Android side of it, though.
What Google ended and when
The sequence was quick.
- At Google I/O in May 2013, Google announced Android Studio as an early access preview built on IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition, and said it would keep supporting Eclipse as a primary platform (Android Developers Blog, 2013)
- Android Studio 1.0 shipped in December 2014 as the first stable release (Android Authority, 2014)
- In June 2015, Google said ADT development and support would end with the year, which covered the Eclipse plugin and the Ant build system (Android Developers Blog, 2015)
- Support formally ended on 2 November 2016 (Android Developers Blog, 2016)
The promise to keep Eclipse a primary platform lasted about two years. From preview to sole supported IDE took three and a half years, and that closed Eclipse’s run as the default setup for Android development.
Who maintains Eclipse tooling for Android now
Nobody. When Google stepped back, it pointed Eclipse users to Andmore, a fork of the ADT and Motorola MOTODEV plugins run under the Eclipse Foundation.
The Eclipse Management Office opened a termination review on 24 September 2024 because the project had been inactive for several years. The repository was archived on 16 October 2024.
The Eclipse Marketplace listing still recorded installs through at least August 2026, so people keep trying it. The code is frozen.
How do Eclipse and Android Studio compare side by side?
Eclipse never had Android built in. It’s a general-purpose IDE, and building Android apps in it meant adding a plugin. Android Studio comes from Google and was made for exactly that job.
| Attribute | Eclipse (ADT or Andmore) | Android Studio |
|---|---|---|
| Android support | ADT ended 2016, Andmore archived 2024 | Official Google IDE |
| Platform | Eclipse Platform on OSGi | IntelliJ Platform from JetBrains |
| Build system | Ant, Maven via plugin | Gradle with Android Gradle Plugin |
| Languages | Java through JDT, Kotlin plugin in Alpha | Kotlin, Java, C++ through the NDK |
| Debug and profile tools | Hierarchy Viewer, Traceview via Andmore | Logcat, Android Profiler, Layout Inspector |
Platform architecture
Eclipse’s Platform runs on a small kernel and loads everything else as plug-ins packaged as OSGi bundles (Eclipse Foundation platform whitepaper). ADT was one of those plug-ins, sitting on top of the Java Development Tools (JDT).
Google built Android Studio with JetBrains on the IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition codebase, then added Android-specific features (Android Developers Blog, 2013). If you want a closer look at how Android Studio relates to its IntelliJ IDEA parent, that comparison covers the overlap.
Workspace vs project structure
Eclipse keeps many projects in one workspace. Android Studio wraps everything in a single project, a concept it inherited from IntelliJ (Dice, 2014).
Inside an Android Studio project, source and resource files live in modules. Google’s documentation lists Android app modules and library modules, plus Google App Engine modules.
Gradle vs Ant: how each IDE builds an Android app
Android Studio builds with Gradle plus the Android Gradle Plugin (AGP). ADT built with Ant, and Google dropped Ant in the same announcement that ended the plugin.
Gradle works as a build automation tool, and AGP adds the Android-specific steps on top (Android Developers documentation). Build scripts are plain text files in Kotlin or Groovy syntax.
Build variants come from flavors and build types, which produce separate outputs from one codebase. Google listed this in the 2013 announcement, right next to dependency resolution.
R8 removes unused code, makes the rest leaner and renames classes, and it still reads keep rules from ProGuard-format files. AGP 9.3 adds an optimization block and keeps the older minify flags working through the legacy DSL (Android Developers documentation).
Publishing changed too. Since August 2021, new apps on Google Play must ship as Android App Bundles, not APKs (Android Developers Blog, 2021).
The practical gap between an APK and an AAB is that Google Play builds the device-specific APKs for you.
Google names Android Studio, Gradle, Bazel and Buck among the tools that produce bundles. Eclipse tooling isn’t on that list. Twitter was already shipping bundles when the requirement landed, and so were Netflix and Duolingo.
On the Eclipse side, Andmore’s proposal listed Maven builds through the M2E-Android plugin and Ant through Eclipse’s built-in support (Eclipse Foundation project page). Buildship, the Eclipse Gradle integration, did not support Android projects, an Andmore committer wrote in July 2016.
Gradle is the dividing line. R8 is configured through the Android Gradle Plugin, so a project stuck on Ant stays outside that pipeline.
Which IDE handles Kotlin, Java and C++ better?
Android Studio, on every front. Java is the closest race.
Java works in both. Eclipse’s JDT is a full Java IDE for any Java application (Eclipse Foundation), but the Android-specific parts of that experience depended on ADT. If you are still weighing the languages themselves, the Kotlin versus Java breakdown for Android covers the trade-offs.
Google’s current Kotlin guidance says over 60% of professional Android developers use Kotlin and 95% of the top 1,000 Android apps contain Kotlin code. Android development has been Kotlin-first since Google I/O 2019.
Eclipse looks different. JetBrains lists the Kotlin Plugin for Eclipse as Alpha. Its Marketplace listing was last updated on 22 May 2025 and shows compatibility up to Eclipse 2025-06. Reviewers there report that it breaks Java tooling (Eclipse Marketplace, 2023 and 2025).
Jetpack Compose, Google’s declarative UI toolkit, is documented for Android Studio. The Compose setup guide starts with project templates and live previews in that IDE and describes no Eclipse route.
C++ ran on its own schedule. Android Studio lacked NDK support when Google announced the ADT shutdown in 2015 (I Programmer, 2015), and Studio 2.2 added CMake and ndk-build builds from Gradle in September 2016 (Android Developers Blog).
That is about six weeks before ADT support formally ended. Andmore shipped a separate Android Native Development Tools feature built on the Eclipse C/C++ tooling.
How do the emulator, debugging and layout tools compare?
Android Studio ships the emulator, debugger, profilers and layout tools in one install. Eclipse relied on ADT, and later Andmore, for the Android-specific pieces.
The Android Emulator comes with Android Studio, so nothing is installed separately, and Device Manager creates the virtual devices (Android Developers documentation). A walkthrough of running apps in the Android Studio emulator shows the full flow.
Studio 2.2 added virtual sensor controls for the accelerometer and magnetometer, along with ambient temperature (Android Developers Blog, 2016). Meanwhile, a November 2019 thread on the Andmore developer list was still about adding a UI to start existing emulators.
Debugging and profiling
Android Studio folded DDMS, Trace Viewer, Network Monitor and CPU Monitor into the IDE with 2.2, and the rest of its toolset grew from there.
- Logcat window for adb output and device log messages
- Android Profiler with a memory profiler and HPROF heap dumps
- Inline debugging and lint inspections
- Apply Changes to push code edits to a running app
Eclipse kept the DDMS-style tools from ADT. Andmore’s 2015 registration listed Core Development, Android Native Development Tools, Hierarchy Viewer, Traceview and Tracer for OpenGL ES.
Studio kept adding tooling over the years. Andmore preserved what ADT had.
Layout and UI design
The layout tooling split is clearest at the 2.2 release.
Google shipped a new Layout Editor with a blueprint mode and a properties panel, built alongside ConstraintLayout so developers could skip nested layouts (Android Developers Blog, 2016). The 2013 preview already showed layouts across device form factors, locales and platform versions.
- Layout Editor with drag and drop
- Layout Inspector for Compose layouts in a running app
- Compose Preview inside the editor
ADT had drag-and-drop UI features too, but Google stopped adding to them after 2015.
What are the system requirements and license for each IDE?
Android Studio sets real hardware minimums, and Google splits them by whether the emulator runs. Eclipse’s floor is a Java version instead. The platform has required Java 21 since the 2025-03 release (Eclipse gef-dev mailing list, December 2024).
These are the Android Studio figures (Google, Android Studio install and configuration documentation):
- 8 GB RAM minimum for the IDE alone
- 16 GB RAM minimum once the IDE runs alongside the Android Emulator
- 32 GB RAM recommended, plus a solid state drive and a 64-bit OS
- Default maximum IDE heap of 1280 MB
Early Android Studio builds listed a 2 GB minimum (O’Reilly, Learning Android Google Maps), so the IDE-only floor has quadrupled, and the emulator floor is eight times that original figure.
Adding the emulator doubles the IDE-only floor. It ships as its own SDK component, and Google’s emulator page lists the same 16 GB, so a lighter editor does not shrink that half.
Check the machine against that list first, then follow a step-by-step guide to installing Android Studio.
On licensing, Eclipse is free and open source under the Eclipse Public License 2.0, with extensions distributed through the Eclipse Marketplace (Eclipse IDE site, as reported by ADT Magazine, 2026). Andmore carried the EPL too.
Android Studio is free as well, and Google called it an open source project in 2016. The download sits behind the Android Software Development Kit License Agreement, which limits the SDK to apps for compatible Android implementations and says open source components follow their own licenses (clause 3.5).
How do you migrate an Eclipse ADT project to Android Studio?
Import the project into Android Studio, let the importer convert the Ant build to Gradle, then replace library jars with Gradle dependencies. Google’s 2016 shutdown notice said most projects, C/C++ ones included, move over with File > New > Import Project.
- Build the project once in Eclipse so the import sees the latest workspace state (the older export route also needs ADT 22.0 or higher)
- Comment out references to ADT workspace library files in project.properties and .classpath
- Choose Import Project in Android Studio and select the project folder
- Replace library projects and jars in libs/ with Gradle dependencies
- Run a Gradle sync, then build and run the app
- Move ProGuard rules over to R8 keep rules and raise the target API level
The mechanics of syncing Gradle in Android Studio are covered separately.
Google’s own instructions changed over time. The original guide (AOSP documentation) told developers to export Gradle files from ADT first (File > Export > Android > Generate Gradle build files) and import the resulting build.gradle, while the 2016 notice said to import directly.
Where migrations break
Google’s import notes flag ADT workspace library entries as something to comment out before importing, and that’s where a lot of first attempts stall.
An Ant-only project still imports and builds, but Google’s guide says build variants need a Gradle build file.
The toolchain has a floor too. Android Gradle Plugin 9.0 (January 2026) requires JDK 17 and Gradle 9.1.0, and turns on built-in Kotlin by default (Android Developers release notes).
A clean import gets the project building. It does not make it current.
When does Eclipse stop working for Android projects?
It stops at the Google Play door. Since 31 August 2026, new apps and updates must target Android 16 (API level 36), and existing apps need API level 35 or higher to stay visible to new users on newer devices (Google Play Console Help, 2026).
Andmore, the last Eclipse toolchain for Android, shows the gap in its Marketplace comments.
- In March 2019, a nearly empty Android 9 test project, created after installing Andmore on Eclipse 2018-12, still reported “Your project contains errors”
- In March 2020, the same reviewer filed two reports of the generated R class failing to resolve, even with the latest SDK installed
- In May 2022, a reviewer said using the plugin had seriously hurt their work
Sources also disagree on Andmore’s Gradle support. A June 2015 I Programmer report said Andmore went beyond ADT with Gradle and Maven support, and the 2014 project proposal listed Gradle builds through Spring Gradle Tools.
Andmore’s maintainers told a different story. In 2017 they called Gradle and AAR support gaps, and a thread on adapting Gradle in the project was only opened in October 2017 (Eclipse Andmore developer list).
The earlier items describe plans and feature lists. The later statements come from the people maintaining the code, so they carry more weight.
One case survives the Play rules. Permanently private apps restricted to a single organization are exempt from the target API requirement (Android Developers documentation), so a frozen internal app can keep an Eclipse build.
Which IDE should you choose?
Android Studio, for every app that ships through Google Play. Eclipse earns a place only for Java work outside Android, or for a frozen app that never updates.
Pros and cons of each IDE
| Option | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Android Studio | Google-supported, Gradle and AGP, Kotlin and Compose, built-in emulator and profilers | High RAM floor once the emulator runs, SDK license terms |
| Eclipse | Free under EPL 2.0, mature Java tooling, Marketplace plugins | No maintained Android tooling, no Gradle path for Android, Kotlin plugin in Alpha |
| Best for | New and shipping Android apps | Java work outside Android, frozen private apps |
Decision rules by project situation
- Starting a new Android app? Use Android Studio.
- If an ADT app still gets updates on Google Play, migrate now. The API 36 rule means an unmaintained toolchain blocks every release.
- A frozen private enterprise app can stay on Eclipse, since private apps are exempt from the target API rule.
- On a machine below the emulator minimum, run Android Studio and test on a physical device, which Google suggests when the specs fall short.
- If your team standardized on Eclipse for server-side Java, keep Eclipse for that work.
Leaving a frozen ADT app alone is technical debt with a deadline attached. The interest arrives as the next target API level.
What to set up first after choosing Android Studio
Let the setup wizard run before opening a project.
- The wizard checks the JDK and available RAM and sets default emulator options (Google, Configure Android Studio)
- In SDK Manager, install the platform for the API level you target. Emulator updates arrive through the SDK Tools tab
- Create a virtual device under Tools > Device Manager
- For a large project, raise the heap through Help > Edit Custom VM Options, which creates a studio.vmoptions file, then restart
Never edit the studio.vmoptions file inside the installation folder. Google says to override only your own copy.
Eclipse vs Android Studio FAQ
How is Android Studio different from IntelliJ IDEA?
It isn’t a fork of IntelliJ IDEA. JetBrains said at launch in 2013 that Studio and the IntelliJ Android plugin are built from the same code and share one project format.
The differences are a streamlined Android setup and the absence of IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate extras, such as additional version control plugins.
Should I use Android Studio for non-Android Java projects?
Usually not. JetBrains describes Android Studio as focused specifically on Android development, while IntelliJ IDEA carries all the same features without that scope.
For plain Java, IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse fits better.
Is Android Studio good for beginners?
Yes. Google’s recommended beginner course, Android Basics with Compose, assumes no programming experience and walks through installing Android Studio, creating a first project and running it on the emulator.
The one prerequisite is a computer that meets the IDE’s hardware requirements (Android Developers documentation).
Is Eclipse still used for general Java development?
Yes. Eclipse ranks third among Java IDEs at 28%, behind IntelliJ IDEA at 84% and VS Code at 31%, which overtook it for second place for the first time (Perforce JRebel, 2025 Java Developer Productivity Report).
Respondents could pick more than one IDE.
What Keeping an Android App Current Costs
The Eclipse vs Android Studio decision carries a yearly cost. Google Play raised its target API requirement on 31 August in 2025 and again in 2026 (Google Play Console Help).
The newest Android version in Andmore’s Marketplace reports is Android 9, and the Play rule now targets Android 16. That is seven major Android versions of drift, and the gap widens by one each August.
Staying on Android Studio trades one migration for a yearly maintenance slot. The order that fits the deadline starts with checking the target API level. Importing and building the project comes next, and moving publishing to AAB goes last.
Verified on 30 October 2026, this advice changes only if Eclipse tooling returns with Gradle and AAB support. A walkthrough of using Android Studio is the natural next step.
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