Developing a beautiful user interface for Android apps can be a time-consuming endeavour. Here are some of the steps we typically go through to design an app:
- We begin to brainstorm and then draw (with paper and pen) what the UI should look like. In other words, we do a wireframe of the app.
- We create the actual design of the UI from the wireframe in design software like Photoshop or Sketch.
- We translate the UI design to actual code in Android Studio. Here we code the business logic. It's recommended we also adhere to the material design principles.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg—designing an app is a lot of work! All these tasks can be time-consuming—especially if you're the only one doing them.
However, in this already highly competitive app market, you have to move fast and make sure your app has a beautiful user interface (in addition to making sure your code is bug-free) or else users will go and install your competitors' apps.
Fortunately, CodeCanyon offers a wide range of beautiful application templates to kickstart your mobile app project. In this tutorial, I'll help you get started with one such template, called Android Material UI Template 3.0. We are going to build a material design music player for Android using this template and also explore some of its useful functionality.
If music be the food of love, play on. — William Shakespeare
Prerequisites
To be able to follow this tutorial, you'll need Android Studio 3.0 or higher.
1. Get the Template
To begin building the music app, you'll need an account with Envato Market. So sign up if you haven't already, and purchase the Android Material UI Template 3.0 on CodeCanyon. You'll see how much work it saves you!
After you've successfully purchased the template, the template's source code is available in a ZIP file—so make sure you download that ZIP file to your computer.
2. Unzip the File
Now visit the folder where the ZIP file was downloaded and unzip or extract it.
When you enter the root folder and click on the Project folder, you'll see a list of template folders. Here is what I have on my Windows 10 machine after extracting it. Note that when you purchase this template, you have access not only to the Music App template but also to eight other templates (as you can see in the image above).
3. Import the Template
Fire up Android Studio 3 and select File > New > Import project...
Make sure to navigate to the folder where the extracted template is located and select the Music App template to import.
After a successful import, an Android Gradle plugin update dialog will pop up. It's recommended you click on the Update button—to allow Android Studio to upgrade our Gradle plugin to the latest version (3.0.0) for us.
When Gradle has finished syncing your project automatically, you'll come across this error in Android Studio because we have successfully upgraded our Gradle dependency to 3.0.0.
To resolve this, visit the project app's module build.gradle file and use outputFileName instead of output.outputFile inside the release build type configuration settings. Make sure yours is similar to the one in the screenshot below.
Inside the same build.gradle file, also do the following:
- Update your
buildToolsVersionto'26.0.2'. - Set
targetVersionandcompileSdkVersionto26. - Make sure the Android artifacts are updated too.
dependencies {
compile fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar'])
testCompile 'junit:junit:4.12'
compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:26.1.0'
compile 'com.android.support:cardview-v7:26.1.0'
compile 'com.android.support:recyclerview-v7:26.1.0'
compile 'com.android.support:design:26.1.0'
compile 'com.squareup.picasso:picasso:2.5.2'
compile 'com.android.support:support-v4:26.1.0'
compile 'com.balysv:material-ripple:1.0.2'
}These Android artifacts are available at Google’s Maven repository. So visit your project's build.gradle file to include it.
allprojects {
repositories {
jcenter()
google()
}
}By adding the artifacts, we have taught Gradle how to find the library. Make sure you remember to sync your project after adding them.
Notice that this template uses the Picasso artifact to load and display the images. You can easily swap it for Glide instead if you want.
Now, if you run the project, you'll get an error displayed on Android Studio Logcat.
To resolve this error, go to /data/Tools.java and remove the getAPIVersion() method. Make sure you modify the following methods—in the screenshot below—in your code to be similar to what we have here.
You can see how well structured the project files are. You're advised to dive in and take a look at the source code (it's easily understandable). While there, you can freely modify any part of the code to suit your needs.
For example, if you don't like the colour choices used for the template, nothing is stopping you from visiting the colors.xml resource and modifying them to suit your taste.
4. Test the App
Finally, you can run the app!
You can tell that this music app interface is well designed. By default, the first tab is selected—it shows a list of songs available. Click on any of the songs and enjoy the music that's being played (though only one song is available in the app).
Note that this template doesn't list the songs available on the host device. Instead, it comes with its own dummy data (for demonstration purposes). So you'll need to code the functionality for listing the songs on the host device. The dummy data class generator is located at /data/Constant.java.
If you click the caret inside the current playing song container (located at the bottom of the screen), it will open up a nice-looking detail activity about the current song playing. Here we can easily implement more functionalities such as shuffle, repeat, and move to the next or previous song. Note that these functionalities aren't implemented by default in the template.
Observe that this beautiful template interface is an Android tabbed interface using ViewPager. If you swipe right, you'll see the list of albums with pictures in the tab.
If you swipe right again, you'll see the list of artists displayed in the current tab.
Swiping to the last tab shows the playlists. Here, you can even add a new playlist by clicking the "+" toolbar menu.
Remember, if you want to make some money from this app by displaying ads, you can easily integrate it with AdMob. To learn about how to integrate AdMob with an Android app, check out my tutorial here on Envato Tuts+.
More Amazing Music App Design Templates From CodeCanyon
You'll save a lot of time by creating with music app design templates. If you want to see other options you have, I've grabbed a some of the best music apps to create for music streaming on Android from CodeCanyon.
1. Android Music Player—Online MP3 (Songs) App
Of all the music app design templates found on CodeCanyon, this is the best seller. Users can stream songs as well as playing music on their phones. Songs can be filtered by category through the app. Unlike an Android music player template that's free, the UI also includes dark mode. The Android Music Player template is one of the best choices for code beginners, experts, and everyone in between.
2. Your Radio App
The name "Your Radio App" is fitting for this Android music template. Users can find and listen to the music that interests them thanks to unlimited categories. It also supports a sleep timer, favorites, sharing, and more personalized features. Try it out if you want a material design music player for Android.
3. Global: Radio, News, Podcast and Backend
Looking for a fully featured Android music app template? Try out Global. Not only does it do radio music streaming, but it can handle news and podcasts, too. You'll also find useful features, like:
- unlimited radio stations
- podcast downloads
- back-end admin control
- share functionality
Try out Global if you want a useful alternative to an Android music player template that's free.
4. Android Online Radio
With a more than 4.5 rating on CodeCanyon, Android Online Radio is one of the top music app design templates available. The UI is sleek and modern, and it comes in dark mode. Take advantage of Google AdMob to monetize your work. If you've been searching for a material design music player for Android, you'll like this template.
5. Cherry—Android Online Music Player With Admin Panel
Cherry rounds out our list of music app design templates from CodeCanyon. This music Android app theme supports both online and offline listening. Users can run Cherry in the background while they use other apps. It even supports multiple languages, so you can reach a larger audience. Very few Android music player templates that are free can say that.
Learn to Code Android With Envato Tuts+ Tutorials
Learning how to code is a useful skill, but it does take time to pick up. If you're ready to start learning, you'll want to check out the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel. You'll find useful coding video courses and tutorials. There are even links to full Envato Tuts+ coding courses!
You can get started with this free course on becoming a web developer:
Written Android Tutorials From Envato Tuts+
Head over to Envato Tuts+ for even more helpful Android and coding tutorials! Learn everything from converting WordPress websites into mobile apps using AJAX in PHP and jQuery, and a lot more. Here are a few tutorials to get you started:
- Mobile DevelopmentHow to Create an Android App Without Coding
- Android SDKMake a Simple Android App: A Digital Business Card
- Android SDKHow to Get Started Making Android Apps
- Android SDKMy First App: How to Create Your First Android App Step by Step
Keep Coding, Keep Learning!
App templates are a great way to jump-start your next development project or to learn from other people's work. This article showed you how we quickly created a nice-looking music app using Android Material UI Template 3.0 on CodeCanyon. We also went through some of the best apps to create for music streaming on Android. Remember, if you're looking for inspiration or you're building an application and need help with a particular feature, then you may find your answer in some of these templates.
Envato Market has hundreds of other Android app templates that you can choose from. There are templates for games and complete applications, as well as comprehensive starter templates like the one we used in this post. So take a look, and you just might save yourself a lot of work on your next Android app.
If you want to explore more iOS apps and templates, then check out some of our other posts on CodeCanyon app templates!
- iOS SDK23+ Best iOS App Templates of 2020
- Mobile Development10 Best Weather App Templates
- App Templates15 Best Swift and Xcode App Templates (+2 Free)
- App Templates22 Best Android App Templates for 2021
This post has been updated with contributions from Nathan Umoh. Nathan is a staff writer for Envato Tuts+.