explaingit

square/picasso

★ 18,829KotlinAudience · developerComplexity · 2/5StaleLicenseSetup · easy

TLDR

Android library that downloads and caches images from the internet for fast, efficient display in apps. Now deprecated; Coil is recommended for new projects.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((Picasso))
    What it does
      Downloads images
      Caches automatically
      Handles threading
    Key features
      Memory management
      Disk caching
      Error handling
    Use cases
      User avatars
      Product photos
      News thumbnails
    Tech stack
      Android API 21+
      Java 8+
      Gradle
    Status
      Deprecated
      Coil recommended

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Display user profile pictures and avatars fetched from remote URLs in your Android app.

USE CASE 2

Load product images in an e-commerce app with automatic caching to reduce bandwidth and improve performance.

USE CASE 3

Show news article thumbnails and images in a feed without manually managing background threads or memory.

Tech stack

KotlinJavaAndroidGradle

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min
Use freely for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you include the original copyright notice and license.

In plain English

Picasso is an Android library from Square that handles downloading images from the internet and caching them so they display quickly and efficiently in your app. Loading remote images in Android is surprisingly complex, you need to manage background threads, memory, disk cache, and error states, and Picasso handles all of that automatically. However, the library is now officially deprecated and the authors recommend migrating to Coil, especially for projects that use Compose UI. You would have used Picasso when building an Android app that displays images loaded from URLs, such as user avatars, product photos, or news thumbnails. It requires at minimum Java 8 and Android API level 21. It is available via Gradle as com.squareup.picasso:picasso:2.8 and is licensed under Apache License 2.0. Existing versions continue to work, but no new releases are planned.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
How do I integrate Picasso into my Android project to load images from URLs with automatic caching?
Prompt 2
Show me how to use Picasso to display a user avatar image in an ImageView with error handling.
Prompt 3
What are the differences between Picasso and Coil, and should I migrate my existing Android app?
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Generated 2026-05-18 · Model: sonnet-4-6 · Verify against the repo before relying on details.