Best Open Source Android Libraries

Libraries are the most useful and convenient tool for Android app development. A developer can save time, skip writing the pseudo-code every time, improve the code's readability, and even perform complex tasks in an easy way and with fewer lines of code. Also, most of you will be familiar with open-source environments. You would also know how open-source projects are helping society and creating a heavy impact nowadays.

For whom this is a buzzword, open source is an environment in which the source code of the projects can be seen and changed by developers across the globe (You have to follow a procedure for this). Android OS, VLC Media Player, and many other software projects are available in open source. There are also many Android libraries that are very-very useful and available as an open-source project.

In this article, we will be talking about the 12 best open-source android libraries which are available as an open-source project. We will also be talking about their benefits. Let's get started!!

Top Open-Source Libraries for Android Development

1. LeakCanary

Memory Leak is the most common cause of crashing an android application. As a beginner or intermediate level android developer, you have sometimes faced the fact that you have coded the application perfectly in your perspective but when you are running your app it crashes. At that time, you may feel a little bit annoyed about why this is happening. The situation could occur because of a memory leak. To understand why and when a memory leak occurs, you should read this article Memory Leaks in Android. To simplify this problem, the Square developed a library and named it LeakCanary. Basically, LeakCanary will help you in finding and fixing memory leaks in your application.

2. OkHttp

We all know that networking is important for Androids. In the process of developing better apps, we have to connect to the internet and make a request to get data from somewhere on the internet. Data can be text, image, audio, and more. Many times we also need to send data over the internet to a specific URL. For doing these tasks, you have to write multiple lines of code and the process will be very complex when we do not use any library for this. OkHttp provides us with the comfort of doing all this stuff. It is on the list of most used libraries for networking on Android and it's also an open-source library.

3. Retrofit

Retrofit is one of the most popular libraries used to simplify networking in Android apps. It helps your app connect to the internet to send or receive data—like getting user profiles, posting a comment, or fetching news articles. Instead of writing complicated networking code, Retrofit lets you define simple functions that handle everything behind the scenes. It also supports features like automatic JSON parsing, authentication, and error handling. When combined with OkHttp, it becomes even more powerful and efficient. If your app talks to an API, Retrofit is the smart and modern way to do it.

4. Media3

Media3 is Google’s latest and most recommended library for handling media playback on Android. Whether your app plays music, podcasts, or video content, Media3 offers a reliable and flexible solution. It replaces the older ExoPlayer and is designed to work seamlessly with Android’s latest architecture components. It supports features like adaptive streaming (DASH, HLS), background playback, and media controls. Plus, it's updated regularly and integrates well with Jetpack Compose and other modern tools. If you’re building a media-rich app, Media3 is the go-to option.

5. MP Android Chart

There are many scenarios when you have to show some data to the user. Data can be of different types and the data looks much better if we represent it through charts, diagrams, or graphs. This open-source MP Android Chart provides us with more convenience to represent our data in a wonderful manner. You should use it once and check out its repository on GitHub.

6. Jetpack Compose

Jetpack Compose is the new way to build beautiful UIs in Android using just Kotlin code—no more XML layouts. It’s designed to make UI development faster, more efficient, and less error-prone. You can build entire screens with just a few lines of code and update the UI easily based on user interactions or data changes. It also works seamlessly with other Jetpack libraries and supports animations, dark mode, and accessibility features. As Google continues to invest heavily in Compose, it’s clear that this is the future of Android UI development. If you're starting a new project, Compose should be your default choice.

7. Event Bus

Event Bus is another useful open source library and it enables central communication between decoupled classes with just a few lines of code. It simplifies the communication between components and decouples event senders and receivers. It can perform well with UI artifacts. It has many advanced features like subscriber priorities, delivery threads, and more. It's also tiny and fast. The event bus is really helpful in data communication on Androids. 

8. PRDownloader

In android development, the PRDownloader library comes into use when you have to download something from the internet. It could be audio, video, text, APK, pdf, and more. It can be used to download any type of file. It also supports pause and resumes features while downloading something. The best point of PRDownloader is you can download it on a large file also. Many downloads can be made parallel. It also provides many types of callbacks, like onProgress, onCancel, onStart, onError, etc.

9. Accompanist

Accompanist is a set of handy extensions that fill in the gaps in Jetpack Compose. While Compose is powerful on its own, it doesn’t have everything yet—and that’s where Accompanist steps in. It adds extra features like image loading, animated navigation transitions, swipe-to-refresh, permissions handling, and more. Think of it as a companion toolkit that helps you do even more with Compose without writing complex boilerplate code. Many features in Accompanist eventually get merged into Compose itself, making it a reliable source of cutting-edge UI tools. If you’re using Compose, Accompanist is a must-have.

10. Coil or Glide

When it comes to loading and displaying images in your app, Coil and Glide are the two most trusted libraries. Coil is designed specifically for Kotlin and Jetpack Compose, offering fast and lightweight image loading with great integration. Glide, on the other hand, is widely used in traditional Android (XML-based) projects and supports advanced features like caching, image transformations, and GIFs. Both libraries handle image memory management efficiently, which is critical for performance. Choosing between the two depends on your UI stack—Coil for Compose, Glide for XML. Either way, they make image handling smooth and professional.

11. Motion Toast

You are already familiar with Toast. It is just a message which displays on your screen for a few seconds. It automatically becomes invisible after a short and specified duration. Motion Toast is an open-source Android library that provides you with tools to customize the toast message. By default, the toast message does not look professional. It provides a variety of options to customize your toast message. It provides built-in types for toast message Motion Toast, Color Motion Toast, Dark Toast, Success Toast, Error Toast, Warning Toast, and more.

12. Pluto

Pluto is an Open-sourced On-device Debugger for Android applications, which helps in the inspection of HTTP requests/responses, captures Crashes, and ANRs, and manipulating application data on the go. It also allows mocking API calls without connecting your device to Charles Proxy or any other tool. It comes with direct integration with Mocklets.

Conclusion

Using open-source libraries in Android development saves time, reduces boilerplate code, and makes apps more efficient and polished. Whether you're handling networking, media playback, UI design, or debugging, there’s a powerful open-source tool ready to help. These libraries are created and maintained by experienced developers and the global community, so you're not just building better apps—you’re learning best practices and contributing to the ecosystem. As Android evolves, staying updated with these tools will give you a big edge as a developer.

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