Android Offline Documentation Download

Android SDK Offline Documentation

Updated on:

Documentation provides you official information, guides,training as well as API reference for developing Android Apps.Previously, offline documenation was provided officially by the Android Dev team, but now it has been handled by the community.

Offline Documentation is not needed for developing Android Apps but it helps you alot when you need access on official guides,reference and most importantly the API reference, all available for offline browsing.

NOTICE:

  • The archive file is very big in-size when it gets extracted (in our case ~1.75Gbs)
  • The offline docs version DOES NOT include the training videos, it is available on YouTube
  • The offline docs version DOES NOT inlcude the code samples, it is available on Github

Required Tools

  • Local server like http-server,browser-sync and the like
  • Offline Documentation Browser, we use Zeal

Download the Offline Android Documentation

All the files will point to the latest version available. Choose the mirror close to your area for faster dl:

Android Offline Docs | Sanfrancisco Mirror
Android.tgz
Android Offline Docs | London Mirror
Android.tgz
Android Offline Docs | Newyork Mirror
Android.tgz
Android Offline Docs | Tokyo Mirror
Android.tgz
Android Offline Docs | Frankfurt Mirror
Android.tgz
Android Offline Docs | Singapore Mirror
Android.tgz

How to Offline Browsing directly

You can directly browser the Android Offline docs on the browser. In this case we gonna using http-server to serve the content.

  1. Download the Offline docs
  2. Extract the .tgz archive. It has parent folder named Android.docset
  3. Now , cd to Contents\Resources\Documents
  4. Open CMD, then type:
    http-server
  5. Open your browser and type localhost:8080. Port number might be different on yours.
  6. Congrats, now you can enjoy Android docs completely offline

How to Offline Browsing using Zeal

Unlike direct browsing, we need to do little hack when using Zeal.We have to extract the archive to Zeal's docset storage directory so the content would be recognized by Zeal.

This will be vary depending on your installation. If you don't know where is the default docset location,

  1. Open Zeal
  2. Hit Ctrl+, aka Preferences
  3. There, you will see Docset Storage. On the Directory you'll see where's the default docsets reside.
You can change the docset location if you wish.

Now for lets "install" the Android offline docset to Zeal:

  1. Download the Offline docs
  2. Go to the docset storage directory location.
  3. Extract the Androd_xxxx.tar there, so that the parent folder Android.docset is now in the docset dir
  4. Now open Android.docset folder
  5. Create file named meta.json, then add the following:
        {
         "name":"Android",
         "title":"Android",
         "version":"__VERSION__",
         "revision":"__REVISION__"
        }
       
  6. For __VERSION__ and __REVISION__ , change them with what mentioned in the downloaded file name.
    For instance: Android_9.0.003.tar will give you version 9 and revision 3
  7. For the Android docset icons, we need to icons. First named icon.png and then icon@2x.png
  8. Using online tools, copy paste this base64 image code, convert to .png then save as icon.png

    Save icon.png inside Android.docset , the same location as meta.json
  9. Using online tools, copy paste this base64 image code, convert to .png then save as icon@2x.png

    Save icon@2x.png inside Android.docset , the same location as meta.json
  10. Open/Restart Zeal
  11. Congrats! Now you have Android offline docs and you can browse em all using Zeal