Android Studio / IntelliJ IDEA productivity guide

Android Studio and productivity

One interesting feature that Android Studio and IntelliJ IDEA have is the Productivity Guide panel. It helps you see how much of the productivity tools that are available and you are using. You can see here a quick screenshot with the one I have, on one of the computers I am using for coding.

You can see that it shows you the IDE uptime and other similar time tracking informations. Besides that it gives you some information about how much time it saved you for using the productivity tools that you have at your disposal.

And at the end, you can see a table with a list of productivity features and their usage.

To get to the Productivity Guide in Android Studio you can go up in the menu to the Help section and then pick My Productivity. (like in the image)

You can also complicate your life and use ⌘ Cmd + ⇧ Shift + O and then move to actions (or ⌘ Cmd + ⇧ Shift + A) and then write down “my productivity”. This is the geeky way to get there :P . This is also a nice productivity hint. Using the find actions or quick actions menu for quickly finding various actions in Android Studio. You can discover more useful “quick search” features on that window if you put your explorer hat on and click through tabs and various options of filters.

In case you didn’t know, Android Studio is based on the popular Java IDE from JetBrains named IntelliJ IDEA. So most of the stuff you see on Android Studio, you can use on IntelliJ as well and viceversa. Android Studio has plenty of Android development productivity boosters that anyone should use to be more productive on their work.

The top and most used productivity features that appears I am using

•  ⌃Control + Space -> Basic code completion
  • I am using this one anytime I need the IDE to feed me with some options of code completion for the current context
• ⌘Command + click -> Go to declaration
  • I think everyone is using this one to navigate to a field or method declaration
• ⌥Option + arrows -> Syntax aware selection
  • I am using this to move through words more faster in the code editor instead of pressing arrows to move through one character at a time to get to the next/end of a word
• ⌘Command + / -> Comment block/line
  • Whenever I need to comment a line or block of code I am using this one. When I need to create a javadoc comment for a field or a method, I am using /** then Enter
• ⇧Shift pressed twice -> Search everywhere
  • Will present a quick search dialog, I am using this quite often to look for code/files
• ⇧Shift + F6 -> Rename
  • Using this for renaming classes, methods, fields etc.

I am using other helpful shortcuts or productivity tools but it appears that not that often as these ones. I am curious if you have any new hints/productivity tools/shortcuts that you are using when developing Android applications. Please write them in the comments section and help others increase their productivity.

I created this blog post from a super old page I have on the blog.