Images, layout descriptions, binary blobs and string dictionaries can be included in your application as resource files. Various Android APIs are designed to operate on the resource IDs instead of dealing with images, strings or binary blobs directly. For example, a sample Android app that contains a user interface layout (main.xml), an internationalization string table (strings.xml) and some icons (drawable-XXX/icon.png) would keep its resources in the "Resources" directory of the application: Resources/ drawable/ icon.png layout/ main.xml values/ strings.xml In order to get the build system to recognize Android resources, set the build action to "AndroidResource". The native Android APIs do not operate directly with filenames, but instead operate on resource IDs. When you compile an Android application that uses resources, the build system will package the resources for distribution and generate a class called "R" (this is an Android convention) that contains the tokens for each one of the resources included. For example, for the above Resources layout, this is what the R class would expose: public class R { public class drawable { public const int icon = 0x123; } public class layout { public const int main = 0x456; } public class strings { public const int first_string = 0xabc; public const int second_string = 0xbcd; } } You would then use R.drawable.icon to reference the drawable/icon.png file, or R.layout.main to reference the layout/main.xml file, or R.strings.first_string to reference the first string in the dictionary file values/strings.xml.