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Android Academy · Lesson

Why Animations Matter

Motion that guides and delights users.

Motion with a Purpose

Animations are more than eye candy. In a great Android app, motion guides attention, explains what changed, and makes the UI feel responsive and alive.

In this course you'll learn Jetpack Compose's animation APIs, from the one-line animate*AsState helpers to AnimatedVisibility, transitions, and physics-based springs.

This first lesson is about why and when to animate, so your motion always has a job to do.

Compose Animates Declaratively

In Compose you don't manually start and stop animations frame by frame. Instead you describe a target value, and Compose smoothly animates toward it whenever that value changes.

Here a box's color is driven by a single boolean state. Tapping flips the state and the color glides automatically.

@Composable
fun ColorBox() {
    var selected by remember { mutableStateOf(false) }
    val color by animateColorAsState(
        targetValue = if (selected) Color.Green else Color.Gray,
        label = "box-color"
    )
    Box(
        Modifier
            .size(120.dp)
            .background(color)
            .clickable { selected = !selected }
    )
}

All lessons in this course

  1. Why Animations Matter
  2. animate*AsState Basics
  3. AnimatedVisibility and Transitions
  4. Gesture and Spring Animations
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