App resources

An Android app is composed of more than just code—it requires resources that are separate from the source code, such as images, audio files, and anything relating to the visual presentation of the app. For example, you can define animations, menus, styles, colors, and the layout of activity user interfaces with XML files. Using app resources makes it easy to update various characteristics of your app without modifying code. Providing sets of alternative resources enables you to optimize your app for a variety of device configurations, such as different languages and screen sizes.

For every resource that you include in your Android project, the SDK build tools define a unique integer ID, which you can use to reference the resource from your app code or from other resources defined in XML. For example, if your app contains an image file named logo.webp (saved in the res/drawable/ directory), the SDK tools generate a resource ID named R.drawable.logo. This ID maps to an app-specific integer, which you can use to reference the image and insert it in your user interface.

One of the most important aspects of providing resources separate from your source code is the ability to provide alternative resources for different device configurations. For example, by defining UI strings in XML, you can translate the strings into other languages and save those strings in separate files. Then Android applies the appropriate language strings to your UI based on a language qualifier that you append to the resource directory's name (such as res/values-fr/ for French string values) and the user's language setting.

Android supports many different qualifiers for your alternative resources. The qualifier is a short string that you include in the name of your resource directories in order to define the device configuration for which those resources should be used. For example, you should create different layouts for your activities, depending on the device's screen orientation and size. When the device screen is in portrait orientation (tall), you might want a layout with buttons to be vertical, but when the screen is in landscape orientation (wide), the buttons could be aligned horizontally. To change the layout depending on the orientation, you can define two different layouts and apply the appropriate qualifier to each layout's directory name. Then, the system automatically applies the appropriate layout depending on the current device orientation.

App resources overview

Resources are the additional files and static content that your code uses, such as bitmaps, layout definitions, user interface strings, animation instructions, and more.

You should always externalize app resources such as images and strings from your code, so that you can maintain them independently. You should also provide alternative resources for specific device configurations, by grouping them in specially-named resource directories. At runtime, Android uses the appropriate resource based on the current configuration. For example, you might want to provide a different UI layout depending on the screen size or different strings depending on the language setting.

Once you externalize your app resources, you can access them using resource IDs that are generated in your project's Rclass. This document shows you how to group your resources in your Android project and provide alternative resources for specific device configurations, and then access them from your app code or other XML files.