Style guidelines for Jetpack Compose APIs

If you're writing Compose code for your app or building Compose libraries and APIs, follow best practices to make your code scalable, more performant, and consistent with the rest of the ecosystem.

The following documents provide guidelines for anyone writing code that uses Compose:

• API Guidelines for Jetpack Compose: Outlines patterns, best practices, and prescriptive style guidelines for any system using the Jetpack Compose compiler plugin and runtime. It includes the following topics:
  • Kotlin style guidelines for Compose, based on the Kotlin Coding Conventions
  • Guidance for @Composable functions and APIs that build on the Compose runtime capabilities
  • Guidelines for APIs that use and extend the Compose UI toolkit
  • Patterns for addressing use cases when designing a Compose API
• API Guidelines for @Composable components in Jetpack Compose: Provides a set of guidelines and recommendations for creating and using @Composable UI components, including the following topics:
  • Creating and layering components
  • Naming a new component
  • Expressing component dependencies
  • Parameters in @Composable components
  • Following correct patterns for creating component-related classes and functions
  • Documenting @Composable components
  • Improving accessibility for components
  • Updating component APIs while retaining backwards compatibility

Audience

These guidelines are written for the following three audiences:

• Developers building apps based on Jetpack Compose. You are in this group if you use Jetpack Compose in some part of your app.
• Developers working on Jetpack Compose framework development. You are in this group if you make contributions to the androidx.compose libraries.
• Developers creating libraries based on Jetpack Compose. You are in this group if you create Compose APIs or libraries of Compose UI elements. These libraries of Compose components may be publicly available or local to your company or team.

Depending on the group you're in, you have different strictness levels for each style guideline. For example, Jetpack Compose framework development generally adheres most strictly to these guidelines.

For more information about the requirements for each developer audience, see RFC2119.

Contribute to framework and guidelines

We welcome contributions to select libraries in the androidx codebase and the style guidelines (Compose API guidelines and @Composable components guidelines) themselves.

To contribute, follow the instructions in the androidx contribution guide.