android download emulator slow Why emulator is extremely slow? I'm using Android Studio version 3.2 and I have 12GB ram and double graphic cards(NVIDIA and INTEL). I already installed HAXM and also forces emulator.exe and qemu-system-x86_64.exe to work with NVIDIA. But still the emulator is extremely slow. 4 Answers 4. My Nexus 5X API 24 and 25 Emulators works well but Nexus 5X API 26 and above are very slow, I check memory and CPU costs in Android Profiler it shows much higher than others, even simulators have the same density . I think currently we often choose latest Emulators ( from API 26 - Android 8.0 and above) ONLY for testing code that relates to OS features changes, for stable and performance testing, we should choose Emulators equal or below API 25 - Android 7.1 . I reported this problem to , hope they will make some enhancements soon. Is Your Android Emulator Just Too Slow? Testing on multiple mobile devices is costly, time consuming and the default Android emulator is notoriously slow. So, what should we do? That's easy - start using a properly fast Android emulator. When developing Android applications, you have to keep in mind all the different Android OS versions and various screen sizes and resolutions. The main objective before releasing an application is to find bugs and design imperfections. Default Android emulator. The great thing about using an emulator for development is that it gives you an opportunity to develop applications without having a real Android device . The default Android emulator comes together with the Android SDK and can be found in the "tools" folder. So far so good, we have our cake, but can we eat it? The answer comes about 5 minutes after we hit the "Launch" button. Go grab a coffee. Have breakfast. Come back. Wait another 5 minutes. Maybe even more. Finally - the emulator launches, only to show how slow it actually is . All these performance problems stem from the fact that it emulates an ARM processor so it can run the actual code of your application. It accomplishes that by providing dynamic binary translation of the device machine code to the OS and processor architecture of your development machine. Basically, it does a lot of mumbo-jumbo to pretend it's an ARM processor - when actually it isn't. OK, it's slow. So what can we do about it? Well, first, we can help our CPU out by delegating the rendering process to the GPU by checking "Use Host GPU" checkbox in AVD's edit window. The screen should now look better and be more responsive. That's because the CPU is not dealing with the tedious work of doing rendering anymore. But, that's still not fast enough. We can download Intel Atom (x86) images and, while we're at it, download Intel x86 Emulator Accelerator (HAXM, for Mac and Windows only). This will enable virtual machine acceleration capabilities of the Intel CPU (for more information check this link). Now we're getting somewhere, once this baby starts up, it should run fast and smooth . You could say that this level of speed should be sufficient. That may be true, but an issue with the Intel x86 images is that you don't get Google Apps, they only come with ARM images. This is important if you're testing an app that uses GMaps, or Services. So, as we've seen, ARM images aren't fast enough even with hardware acceleration. And emulators don't have the Play Store. What now? Genymotion by Genymobile. Genymotion is a new, fast Android emulator developed by the French company Genymobile. It's based on the open-source project AndroVM, and the first beta version was released back in June. It runs on all major platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux). For now it's freely available, but there is also going to be a paid version. According to AndroVM blog, the free version will be feature-rich, and the paid version will be intended for large companies needing a higher level of collaboration on Genymotion. How to use it? Genymotion relies on Oracle VirtualBox to work (version 4.1 or above). So. Download and install VirtualBox. For Windows users it's not necessary to install VirtualBox separately, because it is available from the Genymotion site, bundled with the Genymotion emulator. Go to Genymotion website and sign up. You'll receive a validation mail, so just click on the validation link to proceed. Download and install the Genymotion emulator (the current version is 1.1.0). Start Genymotion. You might need to configure path to your Android SDK location in Genymotion settings (probably if you've installed SDK in a non default location). Since this is a first start, there are no devices. Click on "Add" and download new device. To see available devices, write your credentials in the pop-up dialog and click "Connect". Select the device and click "Start". It starts quickly and is insanely fast! It's a little awkward to start the emulator separately, but Genymotion provides Eclipse and Android Studio integration through plugins, also available on Genymotion website. To use the plugin, you have to provide a path to Genymotion installation and Android SDK, as well. OK, it's fast. Is that it? Well, for me, the sheer speed of Genymotion is what got me using it in the first place. Which is kind of funny, because in the first version you couldn't even rotate the device. But, alongside the speed bump, it also provides GPS, compass and battery control via some good-looking widgets. Battery control widget. The GPS widget even provides GMaps for selecting mock locations, which is really nice for testing location based apps. Device angle control and Play Store. Through the Genymotion shell it's also possible to control the device's angle (accelerometer), but it would be cool to control it using a widget, something like the Windows phone emulator does. Genymotion devices with Google Apps also come with the Play Store preinstalled. This comes in handy if you want to test an app from the Play Store quickly. Multiple screen sizes. Multiple screen sizes are one of Android developer's worst nightmares. There is a huge number of different screen configurations of Android devices. Genymotion, as well as the default emulator, offers custom configuration of device's screen. In the list of available devices, select the device for which you want to change screen configuration and click on the monitor icon on the right side. Then simply select one of the predefined screen resolutions or create your own. Be careful when choosing resolution, because you may end up with something rather strange… Where it comes short. The main setback of Genymotion is that it only provides devices with API version 16, 17 and a preview version of Android 4.3 (API 18) . If we take a look at Google Dashboard, we'll see that Gingerbread still holds about 33% of all devices (API 10) . So, for testing on that platform you still need either a default emulator or real device, which kind of defeats the purpose of Genymotion as a testing platform. And there is no camera, which I don't miss, but could be really useful. In the future, we can expect even more features, like taking screenshots or video screen capturing (which would be great for making demonstration videos). An accelerometer widget would be cool, and even a camera would be nice, but we can only wait and see. Final thoughts. Well, you can never really get rid of real devices, because you'll always want to test an app on a real device before releasing it. But during development I recommend using a Genymotion emulator . Even though it doesn't cover all major Android OS versions. It's fast, stable, the GPS sensor manipulation is awesome and with the device rotation feature added to the 1.1.0 version - it's truly the way to go. Also, deploying apps is almost instant and that can save you a lot of time when you're doing small changes to the app. But you have to watch out since the Genymotion emulator runs faster than real devices themselves, giving you a false impression of the performance of the app. Always test on a real device! Like this article? Sign up for our monthly newsletter and never miss any of them. Removing speed bumps in driving exams. The Croatian Automobile Club asked us to build an app for their driving examiners. The main goal was to transform driver exams from paperwork serpentine roads to digitised highways. Reinventing audio tools to make multitrack use simple. 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To Add GPU Emulation to the Default Emulator. The default emulator ( rsxe5_android ) does not have the Use Host GPU property set by default. You might find that the emulator runs faster if you enable GPU emulation, as follows: Open the Android Virtual Device Manager: Select Start > All Programs > Embarcadero RAD Studio > Android Tools . In the SDK Manager , click the Tools menu and select Manage AVDs . To Start Your Android Emulator. Start the Android Virtual Device Manager : Select Start > All Programs > Embarcadero RAD Studio > Android Tools . In the SDK Manager , click the Tools menu and select Manage AVDs . To Run Your Application on Your Android Emulator. Open your Android application in RAD Studio . In the Project Manager , enable the emulator as the target platform. If necessary, expand the Target Platforms node and double-click the Android target platform. (The active target platform is displayed using a bold font.) Expand the Android node in the Project Manager. Expand the child Target node. Double-click the target Android emulator to activate it. (The active emulator is displayed using a bold font.) Note: If the emulator is not shown, right-click the Target node and select Refresh . If the emulator still is not displayed, see Using the Target Node. If you are using the default rsxe5_android emulator with its built-in skin, select WXGA800 . If your emulator uses the WQVGA400 device, select 3.3" WQVGA Android Phone (240dp x 400 dp) Run with debugging ( Run > Run or F9 ) Run without debugging ( Run > Run Without Debugging or Shift+Ctrl+F9 ) RAD Studio builds your application for Android and runs your application on the selected Android emulator. If the active Android emulator is not running, RAD Studio shows a dialog box that gives you the choice to start your Android emulator. If your Android emulator screen is locked, unlock it to access your application. Android emulators run much slower than real devices due to the ARM platform emulation on top of a non-ARM system; if performance prevents you from using an Android emulator side by side with RAD Studio , see Running and Debugging Your Android Application Remotely. For obvious reasons, emulators also lack some of the features that real devices provide, although you can emulate some of those features such as geo location. Speed up a slow Android device. After each step, restart your phone to see if it fixed the issue. Troubleshoot your connection for slowness. Check your network and connection settings. Learn how to connect to the . If you still have internet connection issues, contact your network administrator, Internet Service Provider (ISP), or mobile carrier. Troubleshoot your phone for slowness. On most phones, press your phone's power button for about 30 seconds, or until your phone restarts. On the screen, you might need to tap Restart . Important: Settings can vary by phone. For more info, contact your device manufacturer. Open your phone's Settings app. Near the bottom, tap System Advanced System update . If needed, first tap About phone or About tablet . Your update status will appear. Follow any steps on the screen. Troubleshoot apps on your phone for slowness. Open the Google Play Store app . At the top right, tap the profile icon. Tap Manage apps & devices . Under "Updates available," choose to update all apps or a specific app. Tip: To help identify which apps are causing problems, make a list of the apps you force stop. Restart in safe mode. Important: Safe mode temporarily turns off all downloaded apps. Restarting in safe mode varies by phone. To learn how to restart a phone in safe mode, visit your manufacturer's support site. Check if the problem goes away. Check if the problem goes away. If it does, an app is likely causing your problem. Go to the next step. If the problem doesn't go away, skip to Advanced troubleshooting. Restart your phone normally & check apps. Restart your phone. One by one, remove recently downloaded apps. Learn how to delete apps. After ea ch removal, restart your phone normally. See whether removing that app solved the problem. After you remove the app that caused the problem, you can add back the other apps that you removed. Learn how to reinstall apps. Advanced troubleshooting. Tip: If an app that you downloaded caused the issue and you reinstall that app, the problem could come back.