How to install the Android SDK (Software Development Kit)

Android is the world’s most popular mobile operating system, so Google has spent a lot of time making developing for it as easy as possible. This is where the Android Software Development Kit comes into play. There are a few ways to download the Android SDK and some prerequisites that are necessary before you can start developing. Let’s get started.

You need to get your computer setup and ready to go before you can install the Android SDK.

The first thing to do is install the Java Development Kit for the latest version of Java 7, using Java 8 will not work, but you can have both installed without any issues. As far as your operating system goes, almost all OSes will work, including x86 (32bit) and x86_64 (64bit) based systems running Windows and Linux and x86_64 Intel based Macs. Google has gone to great lengths to make sure everything works well on any system, so this should not be an issue.

Install the Android SDK itself

There are two very simple options to install the Android SDK, you can either download just the SDK by itself or download Android Studio which includes the SDK. Let’s start with the Android Studio method.

Android Studio

Google released an all-in-one program for developers that includes a full blown IDE, virtual machine manager and, of course, the Android SDK. This is the simplest, and more than likely the best, way to use the Android SDK. All you have to do is download Android Studio from here and follow the onscreen prompts. It’s that easy,