If you are using Android Studio, the Java 7 language should be enabled automatically without any patches. Try-with-resource requires API Level 19+, and NIO 2.0 stuff are missing. If you can't use Java 7 features, see @Nuno's answer on how to edit your build.gradle. The following is for historical interest only. A small part of Java 7 can certainly be used with Android (note: I have only tested on