Following The Android Show, Google made several developer announcements at I/O 2026, focusing on new features in AI Studio for building native Android apps.
web based AI studio You can now build native Android apps. Google notes that the application is “built on development best practices, including Jetpack Compose, Kotlin, and APIs,” in addition to recommended developer patterns.
You can go from prompts to prototypes, iterate on the Android emulator embedded in your browser, and then install the app on your Android smartphone via USB using the integrated Android Debug Bridge (ADB). If you have a Google Play developer account, you can also publish your app directly from AI Studio for internal testing.
To prepare for broader releases, Google recommends using Android Studio for “advanced debugging, testing, and UI refinement.” You can add your project to Android Studio by downloading the ZIP file or exporting it to GitHub.
Google plans to add more features in the future, including:
- Manage your Google Play test track: We’ll soon be adding the ability to invite testers to try out your app directly from AI Studio.
- Firebase integration: Coming soon is out-of-the-box support for Firestore, Firebase Auth, Firebase App Check, and other tools important to Android developers.
meanwhile, Android Studio Migration Assistant It can be used to “port apps from platforms like iOS, React Native, and web frameworks to native Android.” This reflects that developers are already using LLM for this purpose.
Google’s agent leverages existing projects to “intelligently map functionality, transform assets like storyboards and SVGs, and implement Android best practices using Jetpack Compose and recommended Jetpack libraries.”
This effectively transforms manual porting that previously took weeks into a streamlined agent workflow that takes only hours. We shared a preview of this upcoming feature during our developer keynote.
After five years, Google compose Standards for UI development. This Compose-first approach will be reflected in all future guidance and libraries.
Building on five years of evolution, the latest release provides a mature toolkit, from a highly customizable styling API to sophisticated shared element transitions and enhanced input support. These updates reduce code, improve performance, and help you build beautiful, adaptable apps.
On that note, “Android 17 marks a move to a single Compose-based development model for all widgets.” Through Jetpack Glance, Google is unifying its developer experience across mobile, Wear OS (the tile has been renamed “Wear Widgets”), and automotive.
This year’s breakthrough is the integration of RemoteCompose. In mobile and automotive, it enables high-fidelity animation, and in Wear OS, Wear Widgets (formerly known as Tiles) enable native rendering of complex UI logic on remote surfaces. This ensures the best performance on low-power hardware while enabling a consistent user journey, such as checking flight status on your car dashboard or seeing gate change updates on your wrist.
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