Can no longer view Jetpack Compose Previews. Failed to instantiate one or more classes (ComposeViewAdapter)

Question

I've recently got an error preventing any Jetpack Compose previews from being displayed as follows:

Failed to instantiate one or more classes
The following classes could not be instantiated:
     -androidx.compose.ui.tooling.ComposeViewAdapter(Open Class, Show Exception, Clear Cache)

if this is an unexpected error you can also try to build the project, then manually refresh the layout

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class androidx.customview.poolingcontainer.PoolingContainer
    at androidx.compose.ui.platform.ViewCompositionStrategy$DisposeOnDetachedFromWindowIfNotInPoolingContainer.installFor(ViewCompositionStrategy.android.kt:97)
    at androidx.compose.ui.platform.AbstractComposeView.<init>(ComposeView.android.kt:123)
    at androidx.compose.ui.platform.ComposeView.<init>(ComposeView.android.kt:392)
    at androidx.compose.ui.platform.ComposeView.<init>(ComposeView.android.kt:388)
    at androidx.compose.ui.tooling.ComposeViewAdapter.<init>(ComposeViewAdapter.kt:131)
    at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
    at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45)
    at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:490)
    at org.jetbrains.android.uipreview.ViewLoader.createNewInstance(ViewLoader.java:339)
    at org.jetbrains.android.uipreview.ViewLoader.loadClass(ViewLoader.java:176)
    at org.jetbrains.android.uipreview.ViewLoader.loadView(ViewLoader.java:136)
    at com.android.tools.idea.rendering.LayoutlibCallbackImpl.loadView(LayoutlibCallbackImpl.java:301)
    at android.view.BridgeInflater.loadCustomView(BridgeInflater.java:417)
    at android.view.BridgeInflater.loadCustomView(BridgeInflater.java:428)
    at android.view.BridgeInflater.createViewFromTag(BridgeInflater.java:332)
    at android.view.LayoutInflater.createViewFromTag(LayoutInflater.java:965)
    at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:663)
    at android.view.LayoutInflater.inflate(LayoutInflater.java:505)
    at com.android.layoutlib.bridge.impl.RenderSessionImpl.inflate(RenderSessionImpl.java:363)
    at com.android.layoutlib.bridge.Bridge.createSession(Bridge.java:436)
    at com.android.tools.idea.layoutlib.LayoutLibrary.createSession(LayoutLibrary.java:121)
    at com.android.tools.idea.rendering.RenderTask.createRenderSession(RenderTask.java:739)
    at com.android.tools.idea.rendering.RenderTask.lambda$inflate$8(RenderTask.java:895)
    at com.android.tools.idea.rendering.RenderExecutor$runAsyncActionWithTimeout$2.run(RenderExecutor.kt:187)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1128)
    at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:628)
    at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:829)

I have tried clearing the cache, rebuilding my project, cleaning my project as suggested but nothing has helped. I have had the same issue on both Android Studio Bumblebee 2021.2.1 Patch 3 as well as Chipmunk 2021.2.1 beta 4.

I am currently using version 1.1.1 for all my Compose related dependencies, but have tried downgrading and using newer versions but nothing helps.

implementation 'androidx.core:core-ktx:1.7.0'
implementation "androidx.compose.ui:ui:1.1.1"
implementation "androidx.compose.material:material:1.1.1"
implementation "androidx.compose.ui:ui-tooling-preview:1.1.1"
implementation 'androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-runtime-ktx:2.3.1'
implementation 'androidx.activity:activity-compose:1.1.1'

I think there are a couple of questions on here asking similar things, but they are all very old and use long outdated versions of Compose and Android Studio, so they are not very helpful.

Answer 1

It is a known bug: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/227767363

Google is currently working on a fix but there is already a workaround: add these dependencies to every module where you use the Compose preview:

debugImplementation "androidx.customview:customview:1.2.0-alpha01"
debugImplementation "androidx.customview:customview-poolingcontainer:1.0.0-alpha01"

If you have a common core/base/ui module, you can add it there and use Api instead of Implementation to avoid adding it to every module:

debugApi "androidx.customview:customview:1.2.0-alpha01"
debugApi "androidx.customview:customview-poolingcontainer:1.0.0-alpha01"

Artifacts release reference

Answer 2

I was migrating one of my simple projects to compose and I faced this issue. Then I realised I forgot adding "androidx.compose.ui:ui-tooling:1.1.1"

These are all of my dependencies for jetpack compose. Adding the last line did the trick. It took 20 min to realize this...

implementation("androidx.compose.ui:ui:1.1.1")
implementation("androidx.compose.material:material:1.1.1")
implementation("androidx.compose.ui:ui-tooling-preview:1.1.1")
debugImplementation("androidx.compose.ui:ui-tooling:1.1.1")