How to create Android Emulator in Android Studio using AVD Manager | Mobile Automation | Appium

How to create Android Emulator in Android Studio using AVD Manager

 

In this Post we will learn What is Emulator and how to create Emulator in Android Studio using AVD.

 

 

What is an Emulator?

The Android Emulator simulates Android devices on your computer so that you can test your application on a variety of devices and Android API levels without needing to have each physical device.

 

The emulator provides almost all of the capabilities of a real Android device. You can simulate incoming phone calls and text messages, specify the location of the device, simulate different network speeds, simulate rotation and other hardware sensors, access the Google Play Store, and much more.

Testing your app on the emulator is in some ways faster and easier than doing so on a physical device. For example, you can transfer data faster to the emulator than to a device connected over USB.

The emulator comes with predefined configurations for various Android phone, tablet, Wear OS, and Android TV devices.

 

 

A typical Android Emulator looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

What is AVD Manager?

AVD Manager is a tool to create and manage Android Virtual Devices(AVDs), which define device configuration for the Android Emulator. Before you can actually run an emulator, you need to install the Android SDK on your machine, and define an AVD which defines the hardware characteristics of the emulator. You can define things like the device RAM, whether there is touch screen and/or keyboard, camera support, audio playback support, etc. You can create several AVDs to test your device on several virtual devices.

 

An AVD contains a hardware profile, system image, storage area, skin, and other properties.

 

 

Steps to create Android – Emulator Using AVD Manager

 

   Prerequisites for AVD Manager

 

1. Android Studio Should be installed

 

 

Steps:

1. Open Android Studio

 

2. Click on configure button from bottom and click on “AVD Manager”

 

Or another way to open AVD manager is :

 

   2. To open the AVD Manager, do one of the following:

    a. Select Tools > AVD Manager.

    b. Click AVD Manager  in the toolbar.

 

 

AVD manager looks like below

 

 

3. Click on “Create Virtual Device” button

 

 

4. Select “Phone” from Category panel

 

In the main panel list of different devices name will be displayed. Select any device which you want.

 

5. Click “Next” button

 

 

    6.  Select the system image for a particular API level, and then click Next.

 

    The Recommended tab lists recommended system images. The other tabs include a more complete list. The right pane describes the selected system image. x86 images run the fastest in the emulator.

If you see Download next to the system image, you need to click it to download the system image. You must be connected to the internet to download it.

 

7. After downloaded, Click “Next” button

 

8. In AVD page, Enter name and select configuration like device orientation , graphics etc..

 

9. Then click on “Finish” button

 

Once your device created, it will be listed like below in AVD manager

 

10. Then Click on Launch(>) button which is located in Actions column

 

So post launch , device will get unlock itself. Need to wait few minutes get device ready for use.

Once it is ready it looks like below

 

How to check the name of the emulator which is created to add to your appium script ? 

Use below command and check the name

 

adb devices

 

 

 Edit existing AVDs

     

  From the Your Virtual Devices page, you can perform the following operations on an existing AVD:

•  To edit an AVD, click Edit this AVD  and make your changes.
•  To delete an AVD, right-click an AVD and select Delete. Or click Menu  and select Delete.
•  To show the associated AVD .ini and .img files on disk, right-click an AVD and select Show on Disk. Or click Menu  and select Show on Disk.
•  To view AVD configuration details that you can include in any bug reports to the Android Studio team, right-click an AVD and select View Details. Or click Menu  and select View Details.