Android Studio for Chrome OS devices could be in the works, which means that developers for Android will probably be able to use Android Studio on their Chromebooks or other Chrome OS-powered machines in due time. Google hasn’t made any official announcements about Chromebooks getting Android Studio, but details in a Chromium Commit in the Chromium source repository point to such a possibility, and if Google is currently working on things in this regard then perhaps the only unknown variable that’s left is when they plan to release the development tool.
That being said, the commit is referred to as a work in progress which may signify that it is still a ways off before Google actually makes Android Studio available for the platform. There are details which do point to this being a Chrome OS-based project though, such as the mention of Wayland support which played a roll in getting Android apps running on Chromebooks, as well as the reference to installing 32-bit libraries that would be needed for developers to actually launch Android Studio on a Chrome OS-powered machine.
One of the reasons why Android Studio on Chrome OS might be taking so long could be due to the nature of the hardware found on most Chrome OS devices. Even getting Android apps to run on Chromebooks proved to be no small task and it took Google quite a while to get them up and running, and the currently available nature of the Play Store on a Chromebook is even still in beta status. Android Studio is a resource-intensive piece of software and this could be one of the challenges that Google is facing with Chrome OS – whether or not currently available devices can handle running Android Studio software. Android Studio is currently in version 2.3 which Google officially launched earlier this month, and it adds in quite a few improvements such as being able to set a Lint Baseline and a much more simple process for supporting app links thanks to the App Links Assistant tool. When and if Google gets Android Studio up and running for Chrome OS, those developers wishing to work off of Chromebooks to build Android apps will have a set of fairly new tools and features at their fingertips.