It’s a relatively minor update focusing more on stability
Android itself may be moving away from whimsy, having backed down from its cute dessert names for major releases (at least, other than for internal development), but it sure feels like Android Studio’s been more than willing to pick up the slack, adopting a trend of naming stable releases after animals in mid-2021. The first update as part of this new naming scheme arrived as Arctic Fox and has since been superseded by Bumblebee. Now, following months of beta testing, Google is promoting its latest version to stable, and it comes with some new features to help improve the Android app building process — along with a cute new animal name, of course: Chipmunk
More formally designated version 2021.2.1, Android Studio Chipmunk is a smaller feature release compared to the last one and is focused more on stability, carrying fixes for over 175+ quality issues — but does at least include a new IntelliJ update. One notable new bit is general availability of Compose Animation Preview, which lets Jetpack Compose developers inspect and debug their animations. A variety of controls are now offered, like pause, loop, and fast-forward.
Google also gives us an update to the CPU Profiler trace that allows it to show more info on jank when using the Android Emulator or physical devices running Android 12 (or later, when we finally get some 13 releases). A new Jetifier check in Build Analyzer lets devs know when it’s safe to remove to help with performance, and that new IntelliJ update now bundled with Chipmunk offers goodies like project-wide analysis, an improved Package Search UI, and IDE actions enhancements.
Developers can download the update right away through Android Studio’s built-in updater, or can alternatively head over to the official download site.
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