25 New Android Libraries You Definitely Want to Try in Early 2017

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Although listed in order, they are not in any particular order. Let’s get started!

1. Lottie

This is a library that can parse JSON files exported by Adobe After Effects animations and render them into local animations. There is a sample app on the Google Play Store.

With over 7,500 stars on GitHub, it should be correct!

2. Toasty

A library for creating custom Toasts. As the author says, this library is:

The usual toast, but with steroids.

3. StyleableToast

This is another library for creating custom Toasts.

Multiple customization options make your app and user experience unique! Define your Toast style using code or styles.xml.

4. Store

Store is an asynchronous loading and caching library. Document description:

Store is a class that simplifies data request, parsing, saving, and data retry. A Store is similar to the warehouse mode, but it is encapsulated into a responsive API using RxJava to support one-way data flow.

The documentation is very easy to understand and this library is worth trying. You can try various flows, such as data request, caching, parsing, etc.

5. PreviewSeekBar

If you use Google Play Movies, you may have noticed this cool animated SeekBar that previews the movie. Rúben Sousa implemented this effect and open-sourced it. The gif below illustrates its functionality very well. If your app is a player, you may decide to give it a try.

6. Chuck

If you use OkHttp , this is the library that helps intercept and persist all HTTP requests and responses inside your application. It also provides a UI for inspecting their content.

7. CoordinatorTabLayout

CoordinatorTabLayout is a custom combination control that helps you quickly implement the style of combining TabLayout and CoordinatorLayout.

The effect is shown in the gif below:

8. Boxing

Boxing is an Android multimedia selector based on the MVP pattern. You can:

Picture selection (single/multiple selection),

Preview or crop the image.

It also supports gif, view selection, image compression and custom UI:

9. excelPanel

The two-dimensional table implemented by RecyclerView can not only load historical data, but also load new data.

10. Horizontal Calendar

Another Material horizontal calendar view implemented with RecyclerView.

11. CameraFragment

A fragment with integrated camera function, according to README:

CameraFragment previews the camera view directly and provides a simple API to capture or manage the device. You can use CameraFragment to set your own layout and control the camera.

12. AwesomeBar

This is another great implementation from Florent Champigny . It is new approach to a design of a top bar (which we know from ActionBar/Toolbarimplementation), in conjunction with DrawerLayout, inspired by Gmail Mobile from Weekz . You can check, how it works below:

13. ArcNavigationView

A curved navigation drawer.

14. ShimmerRecyclerView

A RecyclerView that can display a shimmer when loading data. This RecyclerView has a built-in adapter to control the appearance of the shimmer.

15. Android-SwitchIcon

Google Launcher style switch icon

This lib inherits AppCompatImageView, and you can use the app:srcCompat attribute to set any icon (vector or image) for SwitchIconView.

16. CounterFab

This is a library that displays a numeric badge in the top right corner of the floating action button. You can download the demo app from Google Play.

17. FadingTextView

A library that allows TextView to continuously change its content in a fade-in or fade-out manner.

18. Bridge

Bridge is a simple but powerful HTTP network operation library. It provides a chained API, implemented using Java/Android's URLConnection class for maximum compatibility and speed.

This library is very well documented and definitely worth checking out.

19. Ason

This is the second library by Aidan Follestad. Its main purpose is to simplify interaction with JSON.

also makes (de)serialization painless.

The documentation is also very good, you can check it out here:

20. ObjectBox

Everyone should know greenrobot. If you don't know, you should know GreenDAO and EventBus developed by them. This time we will introduce an object-oriented database. Greenrobot claims:

Performance was the primary reason we created ObjectBox. Previously we created greenDAO, the fastest object-relational mapper (ORM) for Android and SQLite. Since the first release in 2011, we've learned a lot about object persistence - and the shortcomings of SQLite. We realized that to significantly improve performance on mobile, we needed to start from scratch and create an object-based database.

You can learn more about this here. Please note that ObjectBox is currently a beta version (0.9.7).

21. FlowLayout

A layout that allows subviews to automatically jump to the next line if there is not enough space. The spacing between subviews is calculated by FlowLayout so that the views are evenly distributed.

Please note that this library is still in its early stages.

22. Unofficial Google Actions Java SDK

This is a modification from Mirek Stanek. Since the official Google Actions SDK is written in Node.js, he wrote an unofficial version in Java. According to the README:

Google Actions Java SDK is based on Node.js, but there is no mirror. The purpose of this library is to make it fully compatible with the Conversational Protocol of the Assistant platform.

23. Wearable Reply

On February 9, 2017, Google released Android Wear 2.0.

Luke Klinker saw the lack of an API and published it.

Supports simple and fast text input, whether from voice, keyboard, or canned responses.

24. Shortbread

This is a library like this

Generate app shortcuts for activities and methods annotated with @Shortcut. No need to use manifest, XML or shortcut manager. Just annotate the code you want the shortcut to call.

The current version is 1.0.0.

25. Material About

This is a library that helps you implement the About Me interface.

That’s it. Hope you enjoyed it. If you know of any other libraries released in January or February this year, please let me know in the comments.