appcompat_v7 library

The addition was recently introduced that caters for fragment support.

As mentioned by Android in their Support Library Overview, they say it is considered a good practice to include the support library by default because it can address a diversity of devices and the fragmentation that exists between the different versions of Android. Action Bar come out with API 11, so you need a support library for anything prior to it.

To Not Get The AppCompt Folder
1)When first creating an android project if you choose an the base API level above 11 you will not get the appcompt_v7 folder. For any API lower than that you will see it added to your project.
2) create a new android project and uncheck Create Activity in step-2

Simply deleting the folder is not a solution since it has dependencies to your actual project.

As an alternative you could let the folder be and make changes to your code as shown in the treehouse tutorial

Hope that helps.

Thank you for the comment

I created another program and chose an API above 11, it still does the samething. the Appcompt folder still come up. i picked 12 for the minimum

Hi Daniel,

My bad, its API 15 and above. So if your minimum SDK is set at 15 and maximum at 19 (current API) then you will not get that additional appcompt folder

Hope that helps