Android studio 3 not showing Android 2.3 sdk API 10 for a new project altought sdk is installed

Question

I need to develop a test application for an old Samsung smartphone that has Android 2.3.6

I'm using Android Studio 3.1 and I've installed needed several old SDK from 2.1 to 2.3.3 including google api (that are showed as obsolete in sdk manager)

The problem is that when I create a new project, in the list where I can choose the SDK the lowest API available is 14; it seems that android studio is not showing me obsolete api and I cannot find where to set that I want to see all installed SDK.

Answer 1

Newer versions of Android Studio have minimum API level set to 14. I would suggest you look for android studio 2.3.3 which allows lower level APIs. Download link below:

https://developer.android.com/studio/archive

Answer 2

I am currently using Android Studio 3.0.1 and I have also experienced not being able to select api versions below 14 in the new project window, however I am unsure how to fix this issue directly. I have been successful as changing minSdkVersion (or using a project which had it already set) and haven't had a build issue. The same build issue appears to have solutions here, if you are experiencing this: Manifest merger failed : uses-sdk:minSdkVersion 14

I had a issue running the application on the emulator, as it was constantly waiting for the emulation to finish starting and this was fixed by updating the gradle as suggested by some notifications.

Otherwise I can only suggest trying the older ide version, especially if you are natively debugging using 32-bit windows, as it appears to not be supported in Android Studio 3. However after reading the release log it doesn't appear to mention excluding api below 14.

Native debugging with Android Studio no longer supports 32-bit Windows. We've chosen to focus on other platforms because very few developers are using this platform. If you are using 32-bit Windows and you plan to debug native code, you should keep using Android Studio 2.3. [Source: https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/index.html]

Link to older ide version from the same source: https://developer.android.com/studio/archive.html#android-studio-2-3-3

Answer 3

I face the same error while developing for the API 11. That was minimum of 14. But yes android studio never shows minimum then API 14. This is due to some Appcompat library.

Because when I dug out deeper then I found out that This Library was using minimum of 14 SDK. and due to manifest merging problem I think android studio is not showing minimum then that. At that time I was using 25.+ version of Appcompat library and I was using android studio 3.0.

You can find out more by selecting API 14 and then go into build.gradle file. now here you can change minSdkVersion to 11 or at any api level you want.

Then you can notice that while building you will get manifestMerger error with following proposed solutions

Error:Execution failed for task ':app:processDebugManifest'. Manifest merger failed : uses-sdk:minSdkVersion 11 cannot be smaller than version 14 declared in library [com.android.support:appcompat-v7:26.1.0] \9fe0f18d3439e3d6185e96eddd3ec321\AndroidManifest.xml as the library might be using APIs not available in 11 Suggestion: use a compatible library with a minSdk of at most 11, or increase this project's minSdk version to at least 14, or use tools:overrideLibrary="android.support.v7.appcompat" to force usage (may lead to runtime failures)

So here is the problem and here you got the reason. May be some one can help you in bypassing it. I just thought to share my findings.