The minSdkVersion is one of the signals the Google Play Store uses to determine which of a user’s devices an app can be installed on. If compileSdkVersion sets the newest APIs available to you, minSdkVersion is the lower bound for your app. In general, a new version of the Support Library is released alongside a new platform version, providing compatibility shims to newly added APIs as well as new features. For example, to use the 23.1.1 Support Library, you must have a compileSdkVersion of at least 23 (those first numbers need to match!). Note that if you use the Support Library, compiling with the latest SDK is a requirement for using the latest Support Library releases. You’ll get all the benefits of new compilation checks on existing code, avoid newly deprecated APIs, and be ready to use new APIs. Therefore it is strongly recommended that you always compile with the latest SDK. (You should really fix those warnings though - they were added for a reason!) While new compiler warnings/errors may be present when changing your compileSdkVersion, your compileSdkVersion is not included in your APK: it is purely used at compile time. It should be emphasized that changing your compileSdkVersion does not change runtime behavior. Using the new Android SDK is a requirement to use any of the new APIs added in that level.

compileSdkVersionĬompileSdkVersion is your way to tell Gradle what version of the Android SDK to compile your app with. This is where compileSdkVersion, minSdkVersion, and targetSdkVersion come in: they control what APIs are available, what the required API level is, and what compatiblity modes are applied, respectively. You’ll be happy to know that forward compatibility is a strong focus of Android - existing apps built against prior SDKs should not break when the user updates to a new version of Android.

What does that mean for your app though - is everything going to break? Picking your compileSdkVersion, minSdkVersion, and targetSdkVersionĭepending on the time of the year, it might only be a few months after you release an app that a new version of Android is announced.

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