Why Compose, and Why Now
Jetpack Compose has crossed the threshold from promising experiment to production-grade toolkit. Google has committed to it as the future of Android UI development. The Compose compiler is stable. Material 3 support is mature. Major apps like Airbnb, Twitter, and Google Maps have shipped Compose to millions of users.
For enterprise teams, the productivity gains are real. Compose eliminates boilerplate XML layouts, simplifies state management, and makes UI code easier to reason about. Developers write less code. Reviews move faster. Onboarding new team members takes days instead of weeks.
But none of that means you should rewrite your entire app over a weekend. For large codebases with years of battle-tested View-based UI, the migration needs to be deliberate and incremental.
The Incremental Migration Approach
The biggest mistake we see enterprise teams make is treating Compose adoption as a rewrite. It is not. Google designed Compose to coexist with the existing View system from day one. The interop APIs are first-class citizens, not afterthoughts.
Our recommended approach follows three phases:
- Phase 1: Adopt Compose for all new screens and features. Leave existing screens untouched.
- Phase 2: Migrate isolated components within existing screens. Start with leaf-level widgets like buttons, cards, and input fields.
- Phase 3: Convert full screens to Compose when major refactors or redesigns are already planned.
This phased approach keeps your release cadence intact. No team goes dark for months on a rewrite. Every sprint still ships value to users.
ComposeView in Existing Activities and Fragments
The bridge between the old and new worlds is ComposeView. You can drop a ComposeView into any XML layout or add it programmatically to a ViewGroup. Inside it, you write pure Compose code.
In practice, this means you can replace a single RecyclerView item layout with a Compose component while the rest of the screen stays in XML. The parent Fragment does not need to change. The ViewModel does not need to change. Navigation stays the same.
Going the other direction works too. The AndroidView composable lets you embed traditional Views inside Compose screens. This is critical for components like MapView or complex custom Views that are not worth rewriting.
State Management for Enterprise: StateFlow + ViewModel
Enterprise apps need predictable, testable state management. We use StateFlow exposed from ViewModel as the standard pattern. Compose collects these flows with collectAsStateWithLifecycle(), which handles lifecycle awareness automatically.
This pattern works well for several reasons:
- ViewModels survive configuration changes without extra ceremony.
- StateFlow provides a single source of truth that both Compose and legacy View code can observe.
- Unidirectional data flow makes debugging straightforward. State goes down, events go up.
- The same ViewModel can serve both a Compose screen and a View-based screen during migration. No duplication needed.
Avoid storing UI state inside composable functions with remember for anything beyond ephemeral interaction state like text field focus or animation progress. Business state belongs in the ViewModel.
Performance Considerations
Compose is fast, but careless code will create jank. Recomposition is the main thing to watch. Every time state changes, Compose re-executes the affected composable functions. If your composable reads more state than it needs, it recomposes too often.
Key practices we follow on every project:
- Use
LazyColumnandLazyRowfor any list over a handful of items. Never useColumnwith aforEachfor dynamic content. - Provide stable keys to lazy list items. Without them, Compose cannot efficiently diff your list on updates.
- Defer state reads as deep into the composition tree as possible. Pass lambdas instead of raw state values to child composables.
- Use the Layout Inspector in Android Studio to identify unnecessary recompositions. The recomposition counter is your best friend during optimization.
For enterprise apps with complex dashboards or data-heavy screens, these patterns are not optional. They are the difference between 60fps and visible stutter.
Testing Compose UI
Compose ships with a dedicated testing library that is significantly better than Espresso for UI assertions. The compose-ui-test artifact lets you render individual composables in isolation, interact with them, and assert on their state.
Tests run on the JVM with Robolectric or on device. They are deterministic because you control the state entirely. No more flaky tests caused by animation timing or async data loading.
For enterprise projects, we write three layers of Compose tests: unit tests for individual composables, integration tests for full screens with mock ViewModels, and screenshot tests using tools like Paparazzi to catch visual regressions across releases.
When Not to Migrate
Not every screen deserves a migration. Some modules should stay exactly as they are.
- Legacy screens that are stable, rarely changed, and have comprehensive test coverage. The risk of introducing bugs outweighs any productivity gain.
- Screens with deeply custom View implementations like canvas-based drawing, complex touch handling, or hardware-accelerated rendering paths.
- Modules scheduled for deprecation. If a feature is being removed in six months, do not invest in migrating it.
Pragmatism beats purity. The goal is a better codebase that ships reliable software, not a Compose adoption percentage on a dashboard.
Moving Forward
Jetpack Compose is the future of Android UI. The question is not whether to adopt it, but how to adopt it without disrupting your users or your release schedule. An incremental approach, backed by solid state management and rigorous testing, lets enterprise teams capture the benefits of Compose while protecting what already works.
If your team is planning a Compose migration or starting a new Android project, let's talk about the right approach for your codebase.
Adnan Javed
Senior Android Engineer at DEVSFLOW Technologies