Today, Google announced that it's killing off 32-bit Android Studio, as well as the 32-bit Android Emulator. Moving forward, only 64-bit versions of the IDE will be supported. Obviously, this only affects developers using 32-bit versions of Windows - however many of those there are - as there are no 32-bit versions of macOS.
There are a number of benefits to using a 64-bit system, the biggest one probably being that you can developer 32- and 64-bit apps, rather than just 32-bit apps. It also means that you can test your app on a 64-bit emulator. And of course, 64-bit apps can access more than 4GB of memory since they can read larger numbers.
Google made it clear that it's not jumping head-first into this, and it wants to let developers know well ahead of time. Beginning on June 30, the 32-bit Android Emulator version 28.0.25 will be deprecated, meaning that it won't get any new features. Then, at the end of this year on December 31, the 32-bit version of Android Studio 3.6 will be deprecated. Finally, on December 31, 2020, support will end for both products.
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