Android Notes

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A curated list of official documentation, open-source libraries, blogs, communities and classic books for Android development.

Last updated: 2026-10-30. All links were checked when this list was updated; unmaintained, archived or unreachable entries have been removed. Many of the blogs, communities and books are in Chinese.

Contents

• Part 1: Frameworks
  • Official Guides and Samples
  • Kotlin and Coroutines
  • Jetpack Compose and UI
  • Cross-Platform
  • Jetpack Architecture Components
  • Image Loading
  • Networking
  • Databases
  • JSON
  • Dependency Injection
  • Reactive Programming
  • On-Device AI and LLMs
  • Build and Performance
  • Crash Reporting
  • Testing
  • Charts
  • Logging
  • Plugins and Hotfix
  • New Platforms and Capabilities
• Part 2: Blogs and Communities
  • Personal Blogs
  • Team Blogs
  • Communities
  • Newsletters
• Part 3: Books
  • Computer Science Fundamentals
  • Operating Systems
  • Computer Architecture
  • Computer Networks
  • Databases
  • Compilers
  • Data Structures and Algorithms
  • Design Patterns
  • Software Engineering
  • Digital Image Processing
  • Computer Graphics
  • Linux
  • Android

Part 1: Frameworks

Official Guides and Samples

• Guide to App Architecture -- the officially recommended layered architecture and best practices
• Now in Android -- a complete official sample app built with Kotlin, Compose and modern architecture
• architecture-samples -- official architecture samples
• compose-samples -- official Compose samples
• Android Courses
• Android Versions and Behavior Changes -- new features and migration requirements of each release

Kotlin and Coroutines

• Kotlin Documentation
• Kotlin on Android
• Kotlin Coroutines -- the official approach to asynchronous programming; source at kotlinx.coroutines
• Kotlin Flow -- asynchronous data streams, also a replacement for event buses such as EventBus
• kotlinx-datetime -- a multiplatform date and time library

Jetpack Compose and UI

• Jetpack Compose -- the official declarative UI toolkit
• Material Design 3 -- the design system; see Material 3 in Compose
• Navigation 3 -- the next-generation navigation library for Compose
• Edge-to-edge -- drawing behind the system bars
• View Binding -- replaces the unmaintained Butter Knife
• Circuit -- a Compose-driven architecture from Slack
• Lottie -- an animation library from Airbnb

Cross-Platform

• Kotlin Multiplatform -- share Kotlin code across Android, iOS, desktop and web
• Kotlin Multiplatform on Android
• Compose Multiplatform -- cross-platform Compose UI from JetBrains; source at compose-multiplatform

Jetpack Architecture Components

• Room -- the official SQLite ORM
• DataStore -- replaces SharedPreferences
• WorkManager -- reliable background work scheduling
• Paging 3 -- paged data loading

Image Loading

• Coil -- Kotlin-first, supports Compose and Kotlin Multiplatform
• Glide
• Fresco -- the repository has moved to meta/fresco

Networking

• OkHttp -- the repository has moved to lysine-dev/okhttp
• Retrofit -- the repository has moved to lysine-dev/retrofit
• Ktor -- a Kotlin multiplatform networking framework from JetBrains
• Wire -- gRPC and Protocol Buffers

Databases

• Room
• SQLDelight -- generates type-safe Kotlin APIs from SQL, with multiplatform support
• ObjectBox -- an object database with on-device vector search

JSON

• kotlinx.serialization -- the official Kotlin serialization library
• Moshi
• Gson
• Jackson
• fastjson2 -- replaces the archived fastjson

Dependency Injection

• Hilt -- officially recommended, built on Dagger
• Dagger
• Koin -- a lightweight Kotlin dependency injection framework
• Metro -- a compile-time, multiplatform dependency injection framework for Kotlin
• kotlin-inject

Reactive Programming

• Kotlin Flow
• RxJava
• RxAndroid

On-Device AI and LLMs

• AI on Android
• Gemini Nano -- the Gemini model that runs on device
• ML Kit GenAI APIs -- summarization, rewriting, image description and more, powered by on-device models
• Firebase AI Logic -- call cloud Gemini models directly from your app
• LiteRT -- the successor to TensorFlow Lite, an on-device runtime for machine learning and generative AI
• MediaPipe -- on-device machine learning solutions
• Koog -- an open-source Kotlin AI agent framework from JetBrains
• ai-samples -- official AI samples
• Gemini in Android Studio -- the AI coding assistant built into Android Studio

Build and Performance

• KSP -- Kotlin Symbol Processing, the replacement for kapt; see the migration guide
• Version catalogs -- manage dependency versions in one place
• R8 app optimization -- code shrinking, obfuscation and optimization
• Baseline Profiles -- improve startup and runtime performance
• Macrobenchmark -- benchmark startup, scrolling and other scenarios
• Perfetto -- system-wide performance tracing and analysis
• LeakCanary -- memory leak detection
• KOOM -- OOM monitoring from Kuaishou
• Support 16 KB page sizes

Crash Reporting

• Firebase Crashlytics
• Sentry
• ACRA

Testing

• Test apps on Android
• Testing Compose layouts
• Robolectric -- run Android tests on the JVM
• MockK -- a mocking library for Kotlin
• Turbine -- a testing library for Kotlin Flow
• Paparazzi -- screenshot tests without a device
• Roborazzi -- screenshot tests based on Robolectric

Charts

• Vico -- a chart library with Compose Multiplatform support
• MPAndroidChart

Logging

• Timber
• Logger

Plugins and Hotfix

• Tinker -- a hotfix solution from Tencent
• Shadow -- a zero-reflection, fully dynamic plugin framework from Tencent

New Platforms and Capabilities

• Android XR
• Credential Manager -- a unified API for passkeys, passwords and federated sign-in

Part 2: Blogs and Communities

Personal Blogs

• Luo Shengyang's Android Journey
• Trinea
• Guo Lin
• Xia Anming
• Hongyang
• Ren Yugang
• stormzhang
• Ma Tianyu (litesuits)
• Ruan Yifeng's Weblog
• Zhang Tao - Open Source Lab
• Xie Quan (SELF)
• He Honghui (Mr.Simple)
• Droidyue
• eclipse_xu
• Zimo's Blog
• wwj_748
• AigeStudio
• Yusong MOMO
• Bao Jianqiang
• Deng Fanping
• Piasy
• Yuan Bin
• Zhao Si
• weishu
• Yan Zhenjie
• mynameishuangshuai
• markzhai
• ns_code
• qianxudetianxia
• yanbober
• diygreen
• Zuo Fei
• Frodo
• Lading Wu
• Carson_Ho
• Gityuan
• GcsSloop
• frank (briblue)
• Gavin Liu
• SpikeKing
• Wang Yeming
• Coder-Pig
• Android Performance
• Ouyang Peng
• heqiangfly
• Juejin user 1503787635450584
• bugstack
• Fenfei Security

Team Blogs

• Android Developers Blog -- the official Android blog
• Kotlin Blog -- the official Kotlin blog
• Meituan Tech
• Tencent AlloyTeam
• Square Developer Blog
• Meta Engineering
• Tencent Game Security Lab

Communities

• CSDN
• cnblogs
• 51CTO
• OSCHINA
• CocoaChina
• open-open
• Juejin
• IBM Developer
• SegmentFault
• InfoQ China
• ChinaUnix
• ITPUB
• toutiao.io
• Runoob
• V2EX
• FreeBuf
• Google Developers China (Youku)
• GDG China
• Xiaozhuanlan

Newsletters

• Android Weekly
• Kotlin Weekly
• Android Weekly (Chinese)
• Ping An Fintech Mobile Weekly

Part 3: Books

The links point to the Douban pages of the Chinese editions.

Computer Science Fundamentals

• Foundations of Computer Science
  An introductory textbook covering every area of computer science, focusing on concepts rather than mathematical models, with many figures and examples.

• Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective (3rd edition)
  Explains the essential concepts of computer systems from a programmer's point of view, and how they affect the correctness, performance and usefulness of programs. The 3rd edition is based on x86-64.

Operating Systems

• Modern Operating Systems (4th edition)
  A classic on the principles of operating systems: processes, threads, memory management, file systems, I/O, deadlocks, security, multimedia, virtualization and OS design.

• Operating Systems: Internals and Design Principles (8th edition)
  Covers the concepts, principles and methods of operating systems, and the nature and characteristics of modern operating systems.

Computer Architecture

• Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (6th edition)
  The definitive book on computer architecture: design fundamentals, instruction sets, pipelining and instruction-level parallelism, memory hierarchy, interconnection networks and multiprocessors.

• Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface (5th edition)
  A classic textbook on computer organization that shows the relationship between hardware and software.

• Computer Organization and Architecture: Designing for Performance
  Discusses the principles of computer organization and architecture using the Intel x86 and ARM processor families as examples.

• Computer Organization and Architecture
  Covers digital logic, data representation, assembly-level organization, memory, interfaces and communication, multiprocessors, performance and distributed systems.

• Computer Organization and Architecture (Pentium 4 / PowerPC edition)
  Relates performance issues of modern computer systems to the principles of computer organization, using the Intel Pentium 4 and IBM/Motorola PowerPC as case studies.

Computer Networks

• Computer Networks
  One of the most widely used networking textbooks, covering the protocol stack bottom-up with many Internet examples, plus wireless, 3G, RFID, CDN, P2P and streaming.

• Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (8th edition)
  The textbook that pioneered teaching network principles and protocols top-down.

• Understanding Computer Networks
  A systematic and in-depth look at network architecture, how networks work and how protocols are implemented.

• TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols (2nd edition)
  A complete and detailed guide to the TCP/IP protocols at every layer and how they behave on different operating systems. The 2nd edition, updated by Kevin R. Fall, covers IPv4 / IPv6 and the main protocols from the link layer to the application layer.

• TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 2: The Implementation
  A detailed walkthrough of how TCP/IP is implemented.

• TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 3: TCP for Transactions, HTTP, NNTP, and the UNIX Domain Protocols
  The continuation of the series, covering T/TCP, HTTP, NNTP and UNIX domain protocols.

• TCP/IP Protocol Suite
  A classic introduction to the TCP/IP protocol suite.

• HTTP: The Definitive Guide
  Explains how HTTP works, how to build web applications with it, and how to implement clients and servers correctly.

Databases

• Database System Concepts (7th edition)
  A cornerstone book for building a solid foundation in database theory.

• Database Systems: The Complete Book
  One of the most comprehensive books on implementing database systems, used in Stanford's database course series.

• High Performance MySQL (4th edition)
  A classic and influential book on MySQL.

• MongoDB: The Definitive Guide (3rd edition)
  Covers MongoDB's document model, queries, indexing, aggregation, monitoring, security, backup and sharding.

• Redis Design and Implementation
  A thorough description of how Redis works internally.

• NoSQL Distilled
  Compares relational and NoSQL databases, and explains key-value, document, column-family and graph databases using Riak, MongoDB, Cassandra and Neo4j.

• Designing Data-Intensive Applications
  Explains the design principles of modern data systems: data models, storage engines, replication, partitioning, transactions, distributed consistency, and batch and stream processing.

Compilers

• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools
  The "Dragon Book": lexical analysis, parsing, syntax-directed translation, runtime environments, code generation, optimization, parallelism detection and interprocedural analysis.

Data Structures and Algorithms

• Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in C
  A classic that explains abstract data types and analyzes the efficiency and running time of algorithms, with implementations in C.

• Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in Java (3rd edition)
  The Java edition, combining algorithm analysis with the development of efficient Java programs.

• Fundamentals of Data Structures in C
  Covers stacks, queues, linked lists, search structures and advanced trees and heaps in ANSI C.

• Data Structures (C edition) by Yan Weimin
  A widely used Chinese textbook covering basic data structures, searching and sorting.

• Introduction to Algorithms
  A rigorous and comprehensive treatment of the design and analysis of algorithms.

• Algorithms
  A classic reference covering the essential algorithms and data structures, with a focus on sorting, searching, graphs and strings.

Design Patterns

• Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
  The "Gang of Four" book that defined the 23 classic design patterns.

• Head First Design Patterns
  Professional knowledge presented in a highly readable way.

• Big Talk Design Patterns
  A Chinese book that explains the 23 GoF patterns through dialogues, stories and examples.

Software Engineering

• Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach (8th edition)
  A highly regarded reference on the concepts, principles, methods and tools of software engineering since 1982.

• Software Engineering
  A classic textbook on software engineering theory, continuously updated since 1982.

• Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications
  A practical book for architects and developers, with many examples across different domains.

• Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design
  How to analyze, design and write object-oriented software that is reusable, maintainable and extensible.

Digital Image Processing

• Digital Image Processing
  A masterpiece in the field of digital image processing.

• Image Processing, Analysis, and Machine Vision
  A textbook covering preprocessing, segmentation, shape description, object recognition, 3D vision, morphology, transforms, compression, texture and motion analysis.

• Digital Image Processing Using MATLAB
  Pairs image processing theory with practical MATLAB implementations.

Computer Graphics

• Computer Graphics (C version)
  A classic that covers the basic concepts and techniques of computer graphics.

• Computer Graphics (mathematical applications)
  Briefly introduces interactive graphics and focuses on applying graphics to mathematics and other sciences.

• Computer Graphics (with OpenGL)
  Explains the principles and techniques of computer graphics with the underlying math and OpenGL code.

• OpenGL Programming Guide
  Covers vertex processing, tessellation, geometry shaders, fragment shaders, textures, framebuffer objects and compute shaders.

• OpenGL SuperBible
  One of the best introductions to OpenGL and 3D graphics programming.

Linux

• Understanding the Linux Kernel
  A tour of the most important data structures, algorithms and programming techniques used in the kernel.

• Professional Linux Kernel Architecture
  Discusses the concepts, structure and implementation of the Linux kernel.

• Beginning Linux Programming
  A classic on Linux programming, easy to follow and full of examples.

• Linux Kernel Development
  Describes the main subsystems of the Linux kernel, their design, implementation and interfaces.

• Linux and the Unix Philosophy
  Summarizes the design principles of Linux and Unix software development.

• Vbird's Linux Book: Basic Learning (4th edition)
  One of the best-known introductions to Linux, with detailed explanations and many hands-on examples.

• Vbird's Linux Book: Server Setup (3rd edition)
  For readers who know Linux basics and want to set up and maintain servers.

• Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment (3rd edition)
  Known as the "bible" of UNIX programming, an indispensable reference for UNIX programmers.

Android

• The First Line of Code (3rd edition)
  Known among Chinese developers as "the first book for learning Android", a step-by-step introduction. The 3rd edition uses Kotlin.

• Kotlin in Action
  Written by members of the Kotlin team at JetBrains, it covers the syntax and features of Kotlin and how to use it in real projects.

• Understanding Kotlin Coroutines in Depth
  Explains the concepts, implementation and usage of Kotlin coroutines.

• Effective Kotlin
  Best practices for writing safe, readable and efficient Kotlin code (English).

• Exploring the Art of Android Development
  An advanced Android book combining theory, source code and practice.

• Design Patterns in Android Source Code
  Analyzes how design patterns are used in the Android source code.

• Understanding the Design of the Android Kernel (2nd edition)
  Covers processes and threads, memory management, Binder, the display system, multimedia and input in Android.

• Android Advanced Decryption
  Analyzes Android system startup, how the four app components work, ClassLoader, hotfix and plugin frameworks from the source code.