There are many third-party libraries for Android but several of them are “must have” libraries that are extremely popular and are often used in almost any Android project. Each has different purposes but all of them make life as a developer much more pleasant. The major libraries are listed below in a few categories.

Standard Pack

This “standard pack” listed below are libraries that are quite popular, widely applicable and should probably be setup within most Android apps:

Convenience

• ButterKnife – Using Java annotations, makes Android development better by simplifying common tasks. Downloadand install as a jar. Make sure to setup eclipse integration for this to work.
• Dagger – A fast dependency injector for Android and Java.
• Parceler – Android Parcelable made easy through code generation.
• IcePick – Android Instance State made easy
• Hugo – Easier logging within your app
• AndroidAnnotations – Framework that speeds up Android development. It takes care of the plumbing, and lets you concentrate on what’s really important. By simplifying your code, it facilitates its maintenance
• RoboGuice – Powerful extensions to Android using dependency injection.
• Calligraphy – Custom fonts made easy

Extensions

• Otto – An enhanced Guava-based event bus with emphasis on Android support
• EventBus – Android optimized event bus that simplifies communication between components.
• Tape – Tape is a collection of queue-related classes for Android and Java
• RxJava – Reactive Extensions for the JVM
• Priority JobQueue – Easier background tasks
• ACRA – Crash reporting made easy and free. Check the setup instructions and open-source backend.

Networking

• Picasso – A powerful image downloading and caching library for Android.
• Ion – Powerful asynchronous networking library. Download as a jar here.
• Android Async HTTP – Asynchronous networking client for loading remote content such as JSON.
• Retrofit – A type-safe REST client for Android and Java which intelligently maps an API into a client interface using annotations.

ListView

• EasyListViewAdapters – Building multi-row-type listview made much cleaner & easier.
• GridListViewAdapters – Easily build unlimited Grid cards list like play-store. (ListView working as unlimited GridView)
• StickyListHeaders – An android library for section headers that stick to the top of a ListView
• PinnedListView – Pinned Section with ListView
• ListViewAnimations – Easy way to animate ListView items
• EtsyStaggeredGrid – Staggered GridView
• Cardslib – Card UI for Lists or Grids
• SwipeListView – Swipeable List
• PullToRefresh-ListView – Easy to use pull-to-refresh functionality for ListViews. Download and install as a library project.

Easy Navigation

• PagerSlidingTabStrip – An interactive indicator to navigate between the different pages of a ViewPager.
• ViewPagerIndicator – Paging indicator widgets compatible with the ViewPager from the Android Support Library and ActionBarSherlock.
• JazzyViewPager – Pager with more animations
• ParallaxPager – ViewPager with Parallax scrolling effects
• SlidingMenu – Library that allows developers to easily create applications with sliding menus like those made popular in the Google+, YouTube, and Facebook apps.
• MenuDrawer – Library for easy menu drawers
• Android Satellite Menu – Radial menu which is configurable reminiscent of the “Path” menu style.
• ArcMenu – Alternate radial menu modeled after the “Path” menu style.
• AndroidSlidingUpPanel – Sliding Up Panel
• DraggablePanel – Panels that can be dragged

UI Components

• Crouton – Context-sensitive, configurable alert notices much better than toasts. Download jar from here. See working sample code
• BetterPickers – BetterPickers for easy input selection
• RoundedImageView – Easily round corners or create oval-shaped images with this popular library.
• Android StackBlur – Dynamically blur images
• Android Bootstrap – Bootstrap UI widgets
• PhotoView – ImageView that supports touch gestures
• ShowcaseView – Highlight the best bits of your app
• FadingActionBar – Cool actionbar fade effect
• AndroidViewAnimations – Easily apply common animations
• ProgressWheel – Better progress bar
• SmoothProgressBar – Horizontal indeterminate progress
• Rebound – Easy spring dynamics
• AndroidImageSlider – Animated image transitions
• Paralloid – Parallax sliding effect made easy

Drawing

• Leonids – Simple and easy particle effects (See Tutorial)
• AChartEngine – This is a charting software library for Android applications
• HoloGraphLibrary – Newer graphing library
• AndroidCharts – Easy to use charts
• AndroidGraphView – library to create flexible and nice-looking diagrams.
• AndroidPlot – plotting library for Android

Scanning

• ZXing – Barcode or QR scanner
• barcodescanner – Newer alternative
• zxscanlib – ZXing alternative
• android-quick-response-code – Another alternative

Persistence

• ActiveAndroid
• greenDAO
• SugarORM
• ORMLite

Compatibility

• ActionBarSherlock – Fully backwards compatible ActionBar support library. Widely used. Download and install as alibrary project.
• NineOldAndroids – Fully compatible animation library that works with all versions of Android. Widely used. Downloadand install as a library project.
• HoloEverywhere – Backport Holo theme from Android 4.2 to 2.1+
• CropImage – Simple compatible cropping intent for images

Resources

Check out the following resources for finding libraries:

• Android Elementals
• http://androidlibs.org/
• http://appdevwiki.com/wiki/show/HomePage
• http://androidweekly.net/toolbox
• http://android-arsenal.com

References

• http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/AndroidUsefulLibraries/article.html
• http://actionbarsherlock.com/
• http://nineoldandroids.com/
• https://github.com/roboguice/roboguice/wiki
• https://github.com/excilys/androidannotations/wiki
• https://github.com/erikwt/PullToRefresh-ListView
• https://github.com/jfeinstein10/SlidingMenu
• http://square.github.io/picasso/