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I want to develop applications on Android. Can the SDK be installed on Mac?

Sanjit
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HelloWorld
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8 Answers8

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Yes. Android development primarily takes place with Java and in Eclipse (which itself runs on Java) and therefore is cross platform.

  1. Download the SDK for Mac
  2. Following the installation instructions

This all-in-one post might be easier to follow for you.

If you run into problems a simple Google or post in their Google Group will usually yield a result.

zero323
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Jake Wharton
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  • Consider using NetBeans instead of Eclipse for Android development on Macintosh: http://blog.screencustoms.com/post/1229245596/a-great-relief-in-developing-android-apps. – Aleks N. Oct 02 '10 at 17:45
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    Or IntelliJ, I find it much less confounding than Eclipse. – nmr Mar 19 '12 at 18:37
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    Or better yet, Android Studio (much newer than this post) which is built on top of IntelliJ, nicely set up for Android out of the box, and free! :) – Reid Apr 12 '14 at 17:36
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    I have been working with Android Studio on Mac for a while now... no much impossible problems.... – Francisco Corrales Morales Aug 09 '15 at 23:56
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Looking for an answer drawing from credible and/or official sources.

developer.android.com is official Android site for developers. You can find all desired info at this site. There are steps from developer.android.com to start develop on Mac

  1. Download SDK at https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html. Direct URL for Mac OS X
  2. Install and prepare Ecipse. Direct URL for Eclipse Classic 3.7.1 for Mac OS X(Cocoa 64)
  3. Download and configure ADT Plugin
  4. If you have just installed the SDK for the first time, go to the Hello World tutorial.
beryllium
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10

Yes you can develop on Mac, you have to install the SDK

OscarRyz
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The SDK for the Mac is available at http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html.

John Percival Hackworth
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5

You might also check out http://www.appcelerator.com/ - They have a cross platform environment that lets you develop Air, Android, iPhone and iPad.

txmail
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    @txmail: cross platform development tools are now explicitly forbidden by Apple. In other word: if they catch you writing an app for the iPhone by using anything that is written in Objective-C (and appcelerator is using Java-to-Objective-C conversion) they can revoke your app and your developer rights. Not my call. It sucks. But appcelerator is precisely the kind of developer app Apple doesn't want to hear about. You **must** write your app in Objective-C and you **cannot** use cross-platform tools. – SyntaxT3rr0r Apr 20 '10 at 03:03
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    Wow what a crock of ....; glad I have not gotten to the iPhone development part of the app I am working on yet. Thanks for the heads up. – txmail Apr 21 '10 at 01:17
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    “… Based on their [our developers] input, today we are making some important changes to our iOS Developer Program license in sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9 to relax some restrictions we put in place earlier this year. In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.” – Eagle Jul 31 '12 at 17:11
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I document my experience installing the Android platform on Mac OSX at:

http://sites.google.com/site/jalcomputing/

JAL
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Android development on macs is just as easy as developing on windows (even easier actually because you don't need to download drivers for all of your test devices!

Eclipse works great on a Mac but I personally prefer intelliJ, it has less issues with refreshing and cleaning the project.... plus its nice to look at. The only thing it lacks is an interactive GUI for changing xmls, but even there it does a great job of displaying what the app will look like on an actual device!

ByteMe
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Yes you can. Corresponding guide is on android developer site.

Di Wang
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