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Quick start

With DevEco Studio installed and its layout, project structure, and tooling covered in IDE Basics, this page walks through creating an actual project, seeing it render, running it, and diagnosing anything that goes wrong along the way.

Creating Your First Project

  1. On the Welcome screen, click New Project (or, with a project already open, File → New → New Project).
  2. Select a template. Empty Ability is the simplest starting point for a Stage-model application and is the best choice for a first project. Other templates add sample UI that is not needed at this stage.
  3. Fill in the project details:
    • Project name — a human-readable label used only within DevEco Studio.
    • Bundle name — a reverse-domain-style identifier that follows the pattern com.organisation_name.application_name.
    • Save location — the directory on disk where the project is created.
    • Compile/Compatible API — match this to the OpenHarmony version you intend to run against (see the version/API table in the Environment Setup Guide overview).
    • Module name — name of the default module DevEco Studio creates (usually entry); becomes both the module's folder name and its name field in module.json5 (see entry Module).
    • Device type — the device types your application should target: Phone, Tablet, 2in1, Car, Wearable, and TV. This sets the initial deviceTypes list in module.json5, which you can adjust later (see Project Structure).
  4. Click Finish. DevEco Studio generates the project and opens it; the first indexing pass can take a minute or two on a new machine.

Note

Even if your application will need more structure, starting with Empty Ability and adding pages and modules yourself provides a clearer understanding of the project than removing content from a more comprehensive template.

Targeting Oniro/OpenHarmony

Recent DevEco Studio versions create a HarmonyOS project by default. If your target is a HarmonyOS device, such as the HUAWEI WATCH 5, no further action is needed — use the SDK and runtime that already match that device. If your target is Oniro/OpenHarmony instead, retarget the generated project:

  1. Open the project-level build-profile.json5 file (next to the entry directory).

  2. Ensure the selected product's entry uses the OpenHarmony SDK values — compileSdkVersion and compatibleSdkVersion matching your target OpenHarmony release (23 for OpenHarmony 6.1), and runtimeOS set to "OpenHarmony". Keep any other product options DevEco Studio generated.

  3. Click Sync Now after editing. If Sync Check offers to replace HarmonyOS-specific device types with OpenHarmony's default type, accept the change.

Once the project is open, entry/src/main/ets/pages/Index.ets is the default page rendered first. Open it to continue.

For committing, branching, and a starter .gitignore, see Version Control.

Running Your App

DevEco Studio gives you two ways to see your app running: the Previewer, a live rendering of the current page inside the IDE without needing a device, and an emulator or physical device, which runs the actual compiled app.

  1. Open the run-target dropdown in the navigation bar and select an emulator or a connected physical device. If none is listed, follow Emulator to create one with Device Manager, or connect physical hardware.
  2. Click Run (▶) or press Shift+F10. DevEco Studio builds the project, installs the resulting .hap on the selected target, and launches it automatically.
  3. Watch the Run tool window for build progress and the app's console output — it's the first place to check if the build fails or the app crashes on launch.

For debugging, breakpoints, HiLog, and the Profiler, see Debugging.

When you're ready to distribute a signed build instead of just running or debugging locally, see Build Variants and Signing.

With your first app created, run, and debugged, head to Previewer for a closer look at rendering your UI without an emulator, or back to IDE Basics for a closer look at the IDE itself.