Android Studio Rabbit 1 Canary 5 Refines Compose Preview and Addresses Local Model Privacy

Android Studio Rabbit 1 Canary 5 is now available in the Canary channel, landing a handful of focused fixes that sharpen the Compose authoring experience and correct a privacy concern around local AI models. The build ships alongside Android Gradle Plugin 9.5.0-alpha05, continuing the pattern of pairing each preview IDE with a matching alpha of the Gradle plugin. For the preview cycle, Canary 5 reads less as an expansion of scope and more as a refinement of the workflows the earlier Canary builds introduced.

Leaner Compose Preview Workflows

The majority of the fixes in Canary 5 target the Compose Preview tooling. One change resolves a problem where a PreviewParameterProvider nested inside another class was not handled correctly, which previously forced developers to restructure their code to get previews working. Another addresses an issue where zooming in a Compose preview could also scroll the view at the same time, an awkward interaction that made close inspection of a widget awkward when the preview was larger than the visible pane.

There is also a correction to the lint warning about top-level preview declarations. The rule that flags a preview that is not at the top level was not triggering when the preview was defined inside a companion object, which meant some layout violations slipped through silently. With the fix, the lint provides the expected guidance in that case. A fourth change removes a redundant action bar that was being shown in Compose Preview, reducing visual noise while inspecting a composable.

• Nested PreviewParameterProvider declarations now work as intended
• Zooming in a preview no longer scrolls the view simultaneously
• The top-level preview lint now also fires inside companion objects
• A redundant action bar is removed from the preview toolbar

Taken together, these are the kind of small corrections that materially improve the day-to-day rhythm of authoring Compose UIs. Previews are where much of the iterative design work happens, and friction there is friction that gets felt repeatedly across a project.

A Privacy Fix for Local Models

The most consequential fix in Canary 5 sits under the Gemini heading. A UI issue was corrected where, when using local models, the thumbs up and thumbs down reaction controls could give the appearance of sending private data unexpectedly. The fix addresses the presentation of those controls for locally hosted models, so the feedback actions behave in a way that does not mislead developers about what is leaving their machine.

This matters because the entire value proposition of running Gemma models locally in the IDE is that code and context never leave the developer's environment. Any UI that blurs that boundary undermines trust in the setup. Reassuring behavior around the feedback buttons is a small but meaningful step for teams evaluating whether to route their AI assistance through locally hosted models.

Rounding out the build are a few smaller corrections across the editing and asset tooling. An error is now shown in the editor when an incorrect attribute is used, the fontScale parameter in a dropdown menu reports correct values, and an issue preventing animated GIFs from being viewed or converted to animated WEBP in the Resource Manager has been fixed. A problem where Vector Asset Studio clip art icons did not appear until the icon metadata was manually deleted is also resolved.

For Flutter developers, Canary 5 carries the same two messages as the rest of the Rabbit cycle. First, preview builds are for experimentation, not for shipping production work, and stable should remain the default for anything real. Second, the tooling is moving steadily toward a more AI-native, Compose-focused baseline. The privacy correction in particular is worth watching, since local AI models are increasingly relevant to how developers across the ecosystem protect their code while still getting assistance.

The fixes in Canary 5 are modest in scope, which tracks with where the Rabbit cycle now sits. The feature set was largely laid down in the earlier Canary releases, and the latest builds are about polishing the edges, fixing regressions, and hardening reliability before the cycle moves toward Beta and eventually stable. Developers running the Canary channel should update and retest their Compose preview workflows, while those on stable can simply note the direction of travel.