Android Studio Rabbit 1 Canary 1 Arrives with AGP 9.5 Alpha and Critical Fixes

Google has opened a brand new chapter for Android Studio with the release of Rabbit 1 Canary 1, the first preview build of the next major IDE version cycle. The update lands in the Canary channel, continuing the animal-themed naming tradition that began with Quail, and it arrives bundled with Android Gradle Plugin 9.5.0-alpha01. For developers who work with Flutter, Kotlin, or any other Android toolchain, this first Canary is less about headline features and more about establishing the baseline for the months of preview releases to come.

The new version cycle marks a transition point for the whole Android ecosystem. Every major Android Studio release introduces new expectations, deprecations, and compatibility tables, and Rabbit 1 is no different. Teams pinning builds to specific Android Gradle Plugin versions will eventually need to evaluate 9.5.0-alpha01 against their own projects, even if most production workloads stay on stable channels until later in the cycle.

What's Inside the First Rabbit Build

Canary 1 builds are typically lighter on new functionality and heavier on stability groundwork, and this release is exactly that. The headline is the debut of Android Gradle Plugin 9.5.0-alpha01, which will carry the tooling through the Rabbit cycle, alongside fixes across several areas of the IDE that have been actively developed in recent months.

One of the more notable items in the changelog is a fix for baseline profiles and the ProfileInstaller. The bug in question prevented baseline profiles from being pulled off the device and registered in test-result.pb, which meant collectBaselineProfile could find nothing and copyBaselineProfileIntoSrc would silently delete the committed profile. For teams shipping apps with baseline profiles — a performance optimization that is especially relevant to Flutter and other frameworks rendering at high frame rates — this restores a workflow that has been quietly broken.

• Android Gradle Plugin 9.5.0-alpha01 debuts with the Rabbit 1 cycle
• Baseline profile collection and copying is fixed after a data-affecting regression
• Compose Preview Screenshot Testing alpha15 no longer fails on render
• An S0 critical Gemini data-loss issue is addressed in this build
• Profilers receive a fix for a broken tabbed toolbar test

The Compose Preview Screenshot Testing tooling, which has been moving through alpha releases, also receives attention in this Canary. A reported failure where the renderer crashed on all previews with an IncompatibleClassChangeError around resource inner classes has been addressed, clearing the way for teams that rely on screenshot testing to verify their UI across devices.

Perhaps the most serious fix in the release notes concerns the Gemini AI agent infrastructure built into Android Studio. The fixed issue is tagged S0 critical with data loss as the impact: a malformed shell command executed by the AI agent could delete drive contents. While the details of the trigger are sparse, any fix in this category deserves immediate attention, and developers who use Studio's agentic features heavily should update to this Canary or watch for the fix to propagate to other channels.

What This Means for Flutter Developers

Flutter developers interact with Android Studio at two distinct levels. The first is as an IDE, where Flutter's official plugins make Studio a first-class environment for writing and debugging Dart code. The second is as a build toolchain, where the Android Gradle Plugin determines how Flutter's Android embedding compiles, packages, and signs your applications. Changes at either level ripple through the daily workflow.

For most Flutter teams, the Rabbit cycle does not require any immediate action. Stable channel builds of Android Studio continue to receive patches, and the Flutter tooling itself pins to stable Android Gradle Plugin versions that are well supported. But the Canary channel is worth paying attention to for a practical reason: it previews the tools that will eventually become the defaults, and it is where new baseline profile workflows, build performance improvements, and AI-assisted features are tested first.

The baseline profile fix is particularly relevant in this context. Flutter apps on Android ship with AOT-compiled code that benefits enormously from profile-guided optimizations, and the AndroidX ProfileInstaller is part of how that pipeline works in practice. A fix that restores reliable profile collection means app startup performance data is trustworthy again for teams building in the Canary channel.

The Road Through the Rabbit Cycle

History suggests what comes next. The first Canary of a new version cycle is followed by a steady cadence of Canary builds carrying new features, then Beta releases, and finally Release Candidates before the stable launch. Google's release notes page for Android Studio previews will track each of these milestones, and the fixed-bugs archive for the 2026.1.4 series provides a record of what was resolved in the previous cycle.

For teams that prefer stability, the guidance remains unchanged: keep production builds on the stable channel, reserve Canary and Beta for experimentation, and read the release notes before switching. The Rabbit cycle is young, and early builds like this one are primarily about laying the foundation.

There is also a strategic dimension. Recent Android Studio cycles have arrived faster and with a sharper focus on AI-assisted development, and the critical Gemini fix in this build signals that Google treats agent reliability as a release-blocking concern. Expect the Rabbit cycle to continue blurring the line between editing code and delegating to an assistant.

• Rabbit 1 succeeds Quail as the current Android Studio preview cycle
• Canary builds are safe for experimentation but not production
• Flutter teams should track AGP 9.5 compatibility with their Gradle setups
• The Gemini data-loss fix should be verified by teams using AI features