When you build an app using these new Java APIs, the Java compiler first converts Java source code into Java bytecode. This support is possible with a trick called desugaring, which is performed by D8/R8. Previously, these APIs were only supported on newer Android versions, but with AGP 4.0 they are now supported on nearly all Android versions. The Android Gradle plugin 4.0 provides built-in support for using certain Java language APIs and third-party libraries that use them. If you are wondering how that is even possible, let’s talk about desugaring. What if I told you that when you use Android Gradle Plugin 4.0.0 and newer, you can now use several hundred APIs from newer OpenJDK versions and your app will work on any Android device? Some of these newer Java APIs in Android 11 are supported through backporting while other APIs are also available via desugaring on older devices where the Android platform does not have the APIs on the runtime. While we continuously add new Java APIs to each platform release, we also want to make these APIs available for older devices.

In Android 11, we added support for a number of APIs from newer OpenJDK releases all the way up to version 13, including additions to List, Set, Map, and the new java.time API. With each new release of Android additional java.* APIs are added from OpenJDK to Android. The reason is that the devices which encountered the issues simply didn’t ship with the necessary classes, as at the time those classes were not part of Android.

Android studio update java version