Setting Up Google Play Services

To make the Google Play services APIs available to your app:

1. Open the build.gradle file inside your application module directory.

   Note: Android Studio projects contain a top-level build.gradle file and a build.gradle file for each module. Be sure to edit the file for your application module. See Building Your Project with Gradle for more information about Gradle.

2. Add a new build rule under dependencies for the latest version of play-services. For example:

   apply plugin: 'com.android.application'
   ...
   
   dependencies {
       compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:21.0.3'
       compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services:7.3.0'
   }
   

   Be sure you update this version number each time Google Play services is updated.

   Note: If the number of method references in your app exceeds the 65K limit, your app may fail to compile. You may be able to mitigate this problem when compiling your app by specifying only the specific Google Play services APIs your app uses, instead of all of them. For information on how to do this, see Selectively compiling APIs into your executable.

3. Save the changes and click Sync Project with Gradle Files in the toolbar.

You can now begin developing features with the Google Play services APIs.

Selectively compiling APIs into your executable

In versions of Google Play services prior to 6.5, you had to compile the entire package of APIs into your app. In some cases, doing so made it more difficult to keep the number of methods in your app (including framework APIs, library methods, and your own code) under the 65,536 limit.

From version 6.5, you can instead selectively compile Google Play service APIs into your app. For example, to include only the Google Fit and Android Wear APIs, replace the following line in your build.gradle file:

compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services:7.3.0'

with these lines:

compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-fitness:7.3.0'
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-wearable:7.3.0'

Table 1 shows a list of the separate APIs that you can include when compiling your app, and how to describe them in your build.gradle file. Some APIs do not have a separate library; include them by including the base library. (This lib is automatically included when you include an API that does have a separate library.)

Table 1. Individual APIs and corresponding build.gradle descriptions.

Note: ProGuard directives are included in the Play services client libraries to preserve the required classes. The Android Plugin for Gradle automatically appends ProGuard configuration files in an AAR (Android ARchive) package and appends that package to your ProGuard configuration. During project creation, Android Studio automatically creates the ProGuard configuration files and build.gradle properties for ProGuard use. To use ProGuard with Android Studio, you must enable the ProGuard setting in your build.gradle buildTypes. For more information, see the ProGuard topic.