How to make a Responsive App in Android Studio?

Home Guide How to make a Responsive App in Android Studio?

Strategies to create a Responsive App in Android Studio
Creating a Responsive App in Android Studio
Tools for Responsive Android App Testing
Useful Resources for Responsive Design

How to make a Responsive App in Android Studio?

The primary aim of creating a responsive app is to make it adaptive for all screen sizes.

Overview

A responsive app is one that automatically adjusts its layout, content, and functionality to provide an optimal user experience across different screen sizes, orientations, and device types.

Strategies to create a Responsive App in Android Studio

Define layout behavior using window size classes to handle various screen widths and heights.
Use toggleable navigation or app bars to optimize space while maintaining usability.
Design flexible content areas using ViewModel, RecyclerView, and ConstraintLayout for all screen sizes.
Validate UI on real devices and emulators with local, UI, and accessibility tests to ensure consistency.

Tools for Responsive Android App Testing

BrowserStack Live: Test on real Android devices with local and accessibility testing support.
JUnit: Default unit testing framework for validating code logic in Java/Kotlin.
Appium: Cross-platform tool for automating native and hybrid app tests.
Espresso: UI testing framework for Android apps using Java or Kotlin.

This article will give a step-by-step explanation of how to make a responsive app in Android studio.

Strategies to create a Responsive App in Android Studio

Creating a responsive Android app ensures your UI looks great and functions smoothly across various screen sizes and device types. With Android Studio and Jetpack libraries, developers have powerful tools to design adaptive layouts that enhance user experience on any device.

Below are key strategies to help you build responsive apps effectively using Android Studio.

1. Use Breakpoints for Adaptive Layouts

Breakpoints are the most important elements in creating your app. Material Design guidelines provide breakpoints for certain widths and heights to refer to the window size classes for your app. These classes determine how much area of the screen is required for your app.

Sometimes, the app needs the full screen or a portion of the screen.

Most apps consider the width size classes because of the vertical scrolling. As a result, most apps are suitable for all screen sizes. You can handle those different screen sizes with a few breakpoints.

Also Read: What are CSS Breakpoints and Media Query Breakpoints

2. Implement Persistent UI Elements

Persistent UI elements like the navigation and app bar can be toggled visible or invisible without being removed from the layout. These elements help manage screen real estate while maintaining accessibility.

Responsive apps use size classes to control how these elements behave, taking full width or height when needed, while keeping the main content in focus.

Must-Read: Guide to UI Testing

3. Optimize Content Layouts

The first thing you should take care of when working with the content is that all the data becomes available on different screen sizes. You can design an adaptive screen layout by using ViewModel.

The Android Jetpack provides View Models. These models help to show, hide, or change the position of your content.

Here are a few tips for doing that –

Use a large container to show more content. A scrolling container would be beneficial for this purpose. Use RecyclerView or ScrollView to enable such a container.
Use ConstraintLayout to highlight an important element like an image, video, graph, etc.
Expand the margins to reduce unnecessary space in your UI.
Use DrawerLayout and BottomSheetBehavior to create a supportive panel.

4. Test Across Devices and Screen Sizes

Testing is essential for responsive design. Use both physical Android devices and emulators to validate layouts. Include local unit testing, UI testing, and especially accessibility testing to ensure a consistent user experience.

Android Studio supports these testing methods, making it easier to catch UI issues before release.

Creating a Responsive App in Android Studio

The first and most effective rule to create a responsive Android app is to use ConstraintLayout. It creates the base layout and specifies the size and position of each view in your UI.

Also, maintain the spatial relationship between every view of the layout. Later these views can be resized as per the required screen sizes.

Building Your Responsive App

Steps to build your responsive app:

Go to start and create a new ‘Android Studio Project’.
Next, select the empty activity and click on ‘Next’.
Select the project name as ‘Responsive design layout’.
Choose Language: Kotlin/Java.
Finally, click on ‘Finish’.
Now your project is built, and it’s ready to make an Android app.
Create portrait and landscape screens for your app.
Android Studio provides a portrait screen by default but doesn’t provide a landscape screen. So you have to create it manually under the ‘res’ folder. The steps are-
Go to app > src > main > res > right-click > New > Android Resource Directory
Select Resource type as layout then go to Orientation and then click on the ‘>>’ icon.
Select Landscape in the Screen orientation and the directory name automatically changes to layout-land. Don’t change the Directory name. Stay with the name as layout-land.
Go to the layout-land > right-click > New > XML > Layout XML File and give a name to the file.
Now cut the layout.xml file and paste it under the layout-land folder.
Open the XML file. Then you will get the Landscape mode.

After that, make both the portrait and landscape screen layouts.

Portrait Layout

Go to res>activity_main.xml. Then paste the below code-

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
tools:context=".MainActivity">

<ImageView
android:id="@+id/imageView"
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="0dp"
android:scaleType="centerCrop"
app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/imageView2"
app:layout_constraintDimensionRatio="1:1"
app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="@id/guideline2"
app:layout_constraintHorizontal_bias="0.5"
app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="@id/guideline"
app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent"
app:srcCompat="@drawable/img1" />

<ImageView
android:id="@+id/imageView2"
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="0dp"
android:scaleType="centerCrop"
app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/imageView3"
app:layout_constraintDimensionRatio="1:1"
app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="@id/guideline2"
app:layout_constraintHorizontal_bias="0.5"
app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="@id/guideline"
app:layout_constraintTop_toBottomOf="@+id/imageView"
app:srcCompat="@drawable/img2" />

<ImageView
android:id="@+id/imageView3"
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="0dp"
android:scaleType="centerCrop"
app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/imageView4"
app:layout_constraintDimensionRatio="1:1"
app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="@id/guideline2"
app:layout_constraintHorizontal_bias="0.5"
app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="@id/guideline"
app:layout_constraintTop_toBottomOf="@+id/imageView2"
app:srcCompat="@drawable/img3" />

<ImageView
android:id="@+id/imageView4"
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="0dp"
android:scaleType="centerCrop"
app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintDimensionRatio="1:1"
app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="@id/guideline2"
app:layout_constraintHorizontal_bias="0.5"
app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="@id/guideline"
app:layout_constraintTop_toBottomOf="@+id/imageView3"
app:srcCompat="@drawable/img4" />

<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.Guideline
android:id="@+id/guideline"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="vertical"
app:layout_constraintGuide_percent="0.35" />

<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.Guideline
android:id="@+id/guideline2"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="vertical"
app:layout_constraintGuide_percent="0.65" />

</androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout>

Landscape Layout

Go to res>activity_main.xml. Then paste the below code-

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
tools:context=".MainActivity">

<ImageView
android:id="@+id/imageView"
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="0dp"
android:scaleType="centerCrop"
app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/guideline2"
app:layout_constraintDimensionRatio="1:1"
app:layout_constraintEnd_toStartOf="@+id/imageView2"
app:layout_constraintStart_toStartOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="@+id/guideline"
app:srcCompat="@drawable/img1" />

<ImageView
android:id="@+id/imageView2"
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="0dp"
android:scaleType="centerCrop"
app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/guideline2"
app:layout_constraintDimensionRatio="1:1"
app:layout_constraintEnd_toStartOf="@+id/imageView3"
app:layout_constraintHorizontal_bias="0.5"
app:layout_constraintStart_toEndOf="@+id/imageView"
app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="@+id/guideline"
app:srcCompat="@drawable/img2" />

<ImageView
android:id="@+id/imageView3"
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="0dp"
android:scaleType="centerCrop"
app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/guideline2"
app:layout_constraintDimensionRatio="1:1"
app:layout_constraintEnd_toStartOf="@+id/imageView4"
app:layout_constraintHorizontal_bias="0.5"
app:layout_constraintStart_toEndOf="@+id/imageView2"
app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="@+id/guideline"
app:srcCompat="@drawable/img3" />

<ImageView
android:id="@+id/imageView4"
android:layout_width="0dp"
android:layout_height="0dp"
android:scaleType="centerCrop"
app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="@+id/guideline2"
app:layout_constraintDimensionRatio="1:1"
app:layout_constraintEnd_toEndOf="parent"
app:layout_constraintStart_toEndOf="@+id/imageView3"
app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="@+id/guideline"
app:srcCompat="@drawable/img4" />

<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.Guideline
android:id="@+id/guideline"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="horizontal"
app:layout_constraintGuide_percent="0.35" />

<androidx.constraintlayout.widget.Guideline
android:id="@+id/guideline2"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:orientation="horizontal"
app:layout_constraintGuide_percent="0.60" />

</androidx.constraintlayout.widget.ConstraintLayout>

Finally, your Responsive app is ready. Now you can run and test it.

Material Component for the Responsive App in the Android studio

It’s impossible to create different screen layouts for different screen sizes. Hence Google introduced material components for responsive android app designing. You can create a view with material components with padding and without padding, and both will give a responsive design UI layout.

But if you use standard components, that will not provide any responsive layout. Thus it’s recommended to use material components for responsive Android app making.

Here is the code for making apps with those components (material card view) with padding in Android studio-

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:background="#fff"
android:padding="30dp"
tools:context=".customer.Find_Farmer">

<com.google.android.material.card.MaterialCardView
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="200dp"
app:cardCornerRadius="20dp"
android:elevation="8dp"
android:backgroundTint="@color/bottom">

<RelativeLayout
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">

<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="Text Here"
android:textStyle="bold"
android:layout_centerInParent="true"
android:textColor="#fff"
android:textSize="28sp"/>

</RelativeLayout>

</com.google.android.material.card.MaterialCardView>

</RelativeLayout>

Tools for Responsive Android App Testing

Here are some top tools for Responsive android app testing:

1. BrowserStack Live

BrowserStack Live allows you to test Android apps on a wide range of real devices, helping ensure responsive performance across screen sizes and OS versions.

Supports local testing for apps behind firewalls or in dev environments.
Enables accessibility testing using built-in tools like Screen Reader.
Offers instant access to real Android devices, eliminating the need for in-house device labs.

2. JUnit

JUnit is Android’s default unit testing framework for validating code logic.

Ideal for unit-level testing using Java or Kotlin.
Simplifies test case management with annotations like @Test, @Before, and @After.

3. Appium

Appium is a cross-platform automation tool for testing native, hybrid, and mobile web apps.

Leverages Selenium WebDriver, supporting multiple programming languages.
Best suited for end-to-end and cross-browser testing on real or virtual devices.

4. Espresso

Espresso is Google’s official UI testing framework for Android.

Allows fast and reliable UI interactions and assertions.
It supports Java and Kotlin and integrates well with Android Studio.

Talk to an Expert

Follow-Up Read: Top Android Devices For Mobile App Testing

Conclusion

Testing is a crucial part of your app development process. You have to check your app through end-to-end testing activities to ensure that, ultimately it can meet the end-users requirements. BrowserStack is the go-to infrastructure to test your Android apps. You can easily find bugs and report them by accessing 3500+ devices and browsers for Android testing.

Useful Resources for Responsive Design

Understanding Responsive Design

Implementing Responsive Design

Testing & Troubleshooting Responsive Design

Browser Testing on 3500+ Real Devices

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