Use the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant

The Android SDK Upgrade Assistant is a tool in Android Studio that helps you upgrade the targetSdkVersion, or the API level that your app targets. It's important to keep your targetSdkVersion up to date so you can use the platform's latest features. The Android SDK Upgrade Assistant is available in Android Studio Giraffe and higher.

The Android SDK Upgrade Assistant helps you save time and effort when updating the targetSdkVersion:

For each migration step, it highlights the major breaking changes and how to address them.
It tries to filter the full list of changes to only show steps relevant to your app. It'll show a step if it's not certain though, so you might still see steps that you can skip.

Note: If you need to reset the step filters, close and reopen your project or restart the Studio IDE. The SDK Upgrade Assistant filters the migration steps once at the beginning of each project session, so you might want to reset the step filters if you've checked out another version of your project for which previously hidden steps apply.
For some changes, it pinpoints where exactly in your code the changes need to be made.

To open the Android SDK Upgrade Assistant, go to Tools > Android SDK Upgrade Assistant. In the Assistant panel, select the API level that you want to upgrade to for guidance. For the best experience, you should upgrade targetSdkVersion values one level at a time.

Android SDK Upgrade Assistant

Report bugs

To help us create the best experience for you, please submit feedback and bugs using the issue tracker.