androidperformanceandroid-emulatorgenymotionqemu

Reputation: 3441

Why is the Android emulator so slow? How can we speed up the Android emulator?

I have got a 2.67 GHz Celeron processor, and 1.21 GB of RAM on a x86 Windows XP Professional machine.

My understanding is that the Android Emulator should start fairly quickly on such a machine, but for me, it doesn't. I have followed all the instructions in setting up the IDE, SDKs, JDKs and such and have had some success in starting the emulator quickly, but that is very rare. How can I, if possible, fix this problem?

Even if it starts and loads the home screen, it is very sluggish. I have tried the Eclipse IDE in version 3.5 (Galileo) and 3.4 (Ganymede).

Upvotes: 3564

Answers (30)

Shubham Pandey

Reputation: 219

Make sure you have Good RAM and ssd installed on your system. Beside that also there should be dedicated graphics card for running Emulator more smoothly.

Upvotes: 0

Vikas Patidar

Reputation: 43359

Update

You can now enable the Quick Boot option for Android Emulator. That will save emulator state, and it will start the emulator quickly on the next boot.

Click on Emulator edit button, then click Show Advanced Setting. Then enable Quick Boot like below screenshot.

Quick boot

Android Development Tools (ADT) 9.0.0 (or later) has a feature that allows you to save state of the AVD (emulator), and you can start your emulator instantly. You have to enable this feature while creating a new AVD or you can just create it later by editing the AVD.

Also I have increased the Device RAM Size to 1024 which results in a very fast emulator.

Refer to the given below screenshots for more information.

Creating a new AVD with the save snapshot feature.

Android emulator with save snapshot feature.

Launching the emulator from the snapshot.

Launching the emulator from the snapshot.

And for speeding up your emulator you can refer to Speed up your Android Emulator!:

Using ssd hard drive has too much impact and I recommend to use more suitable ram (8 or higher)

Upvotes: 1478

Prashanth Sams

Reputation: 21149

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please first refer to the Intel list about VT to make sure your CPU supports Intel VT.

HAXM Speeds Up the Slow Android Emulator

HAXM stands for - "Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager"

Currently, it supports only Intel® VT (Intel Virtualization Technology).

The Android emulator is based on QEMU. The interface between QEMU and the HAXM driver on the host system is designed to be vendor-agnostic.

HAXM

Steps for Configuring Your Android Development Environment for HAXM

Update Eclipse: Make sure your Eclipse installation and the ADT plug-in are fully up-to-date.
Update your Android Tools: After each Eclipse plug-in update, it is important to update your Android SDK Tools. To do this, launch the Android SDK Manager and update all the Android SDK components. To take advantage of HAXM, you must be on at least release version 17.

Enter image description here

Download the x86 Atom System Images and the Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager Driver. Follow the image below:

Enter image description here

Install the HAXM Driver by running "IntelHaxm.exe". It will be located in one of the following locations:
- C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\extras\intel\Hardware_Accelerated_Execution_Manager
- C:\Users\<user>\adt-bundle-windows-x86_64\sdk\extras\intel\Hardware_Accelerated_Execution_Manager
If the installer fails with the message that Intel VT must be turned on, you need to enable this in the BIOS. See the description for how to do this in Enabling Intel VT (Virtualization Technology) .

Install .exe or .dmg

Create a new x86 AVD: Follow the image below:

Create AVD

Or as for new SDK,

Upvotes: 1152

Ahmad

Reputation: 72633

Well, since somebody suggested Android x86 as an alternative testing emulator, I'll also present my favorite. This might not be an alternative for everyone, but for me it's perfect!

Use the Bluestacks Player. It runs Android 2.3.4 and is very fluid and fast. Sometimes it is even faster than a normal device. The only downside is, that you can just test apps on the API Level 10 and just on one screen size, but it's perfect just for testing if it's working or not. Just connect the Player with the adb by running

adb connect 127.0.0.1

After compiling, it installs instantly. It is very impressive, considering I have rather an average computer hardware (dual core with 4 GB of RAM).

Upvotes: 22

Amin Rahkan

Reputation: 119

Use the Intel x86 Emulator Accelerator

First, install the Intel x86 Emulator Accelerator (HAXM). This can be downloaded directly from Intel or using Android SDK Manager. In the SDK Manager, it's located under Extras.

In the version of Android Studio I used (0.8.9), Android SDK Manager downloads HAXM but doesn't actually run the installer (I assume this will be fixed in later releases). To run the installer I had to go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-studio\sdk\extras\intel\Hardware_Accelerated_Execution_Manager and manually launch intelhaxm.exe.

HAXM works with Intel devices, so created a new Emulator with Intel CPU.

Create a new AVD using Intel Atom x86

This improved things considerably, but the emulator was still feeling a bit sluggish. The final step was selecting Use Host GPU in Android Virtual Device Manager (AVD).

After these changes, Android Emulator was launching in 5-10 seconds and running without any noticeable lag. Be aware that these features are hardware dependent (CPU/GPU) and may not work on some systems.

Upvotes: 32

Filip Dupanović

Reputation: 33690

You can review the emulator issues on the Google I/O 2011: Android Development Tools talk, starting a 0:40:20.

The emulator runs slowly because the complete Android environment is running on emulated hardware and the instructions are executed on an emulated ARM processor as well.

The main choking point is rendering since it's not running on any dedicated hardware but it's actually being performed through software rendering. Lowering the screen size will drastically improve emulator performance. Getting more/faster memory isn't going to help.

They've mentioned, at the time, that they're developing an interface that would allow the emulator to pipe certain instructions through the host hardware, so eventually, you'll be able to leverage emulator performances with the raw power of desktop hardware.

Upvotes: 37

James Wald

Reputation: 13746

Intel released recommended installation instructions for the ICS emulator on May 15, 2012. This worked for me. The emulator is now fast and the UI is smooth.

The first half of the instructions are detailed enough, so I will assume you were able to install the Intel x86 Atom System Image(s) using the Android SDK manager, as well as Intel HAXM.

Now to ensure that everything else is set up so you can enjoy a highly performing emulator:

Install Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM)

And start it:

sudo kextload -b com.intel.kext.intelhaxm (mac)

If HAXM is working properly, you may see this message when launching the emulator:

HAX is working and emulator runs in fast virtual mode

Otherwise, you may see this error:

HAX is not working and the emulator runs in emulation mode emulator:
Failed to open the hax module

Use GPU emulation. You cannot use the Snapshot option when using GPU emulation as of this writing. Ensure that GPU emulation is set to "yes".
Set the device memory to 1024 MB or more, but not more than the Intel HAXM setting. I use 1024 MB per device and 2048 for HAXM.

Always double-check the settings after saving! The emulator is very picky about what it allows you to set, and it will revert configurations without telling you.

With these settings the software keyboard no longer appears, nor do the on-screen back, menu, and recent keys. This appears to be a limitation of the current ICS Intel x86 system image. You will need to use the keyboard shortcuts.

On Mac OS you will need to hold fn + control for the F1 - F12 keys to work. Page up/down/left/right can be performed using control + arrow keys.

Upvotes: 133

blaffie

Reputation: 505

UPDATE: The latest version of Android studio (2.x) made major improvements to the bundled emulator. It's responsive and has a whole bunch of features.

For those still interested: Try using Genymotion. You can download a version for Windows/Mac OS X/Linux after registering. A plugin for Eclipse is also available:

The installation of the plugin can be done by launching Eclipse and going to "Help / Install New Software" menu, then just add a new Update Site with the following URL: http://plugins.genymotion.com/eclipse. Follow the steps indicated by Eclipse.

This emulator is fast and responsive.

GenyMotion allows you to control various sensors of your device including the battery level, signal strength, and GPS. The latest version now also contains camera tools.

Upvotes: 323

Sumukh Bhandarkar

Reputation: 384

Firstly, you need to upgrade your RAM to atleast 8GB.

If you cannot upgrade your RAM, then try running the application on your Android Phone by connecting it via Data Cable and USB Debugging set as ON.

Also, you may use some other emulators like GenyMotion or Nox.

However, with the amount of RAM that you seem to be having, even other emulators may tend to be slow.

Upvotes: 1

Nicolas Raoul

Reputation: 60213

The emulator included in your (old) version of Eclipse is very slow.

Recent emulators are faster than they use to be in 2010. Update your SDK/IDE.

Personally, I use a real phone to do my tests. It is faster and tests are more realistic. But if you want to test your application on a lot of different Android versions and don't want to buy several phones, you will have to use the emulator from time to time.

Upvotes: 221

andgps

Reputation: 231

You can create emulator.bat with following command to start the emulator. It will start faster.

emulator.exe -cpu-delay 0 -no-boot-anim @<avd name>

Or on Unix (Mac or Linux flavors):

emulator -cpu-delay 0 -no-boot-anim @<avd name>

Upvotes: 114

JRE.exe

Reputation: 799

Emulators are slow. There's really nothing you can do about it, but there are alternatives to the emulator.

To make your emulator faster, you can host a GPU and use a lighter Android version (Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)). Developing on a Mac would be better. Why use an emulator, BTW? Using a real phone makes more sense.

Upvotes: 63

Kaveesh Kanwal

Reputation: 1773

You can download the genymotion emulator from here. This is fast and efficient.

Upvotes: 5

Sofien Rahmouni

Reputation: 4927

Yes, you are right since native android emulator is very slow than the other custom emulators like genymotion. I figured out that while I was running functional calabash android test.

On the native android emulator, this issue is produced when "timeout exception" occurs, so I moved to genymotion emulator who resolved the problem.

P.S: genymotion emulator is not free anymore.

Upvotes: 0

Anil8753

Reputation: 2735

Android emulator is dead slow. It takes 800MB memory while running. If you are on Windows, You can use Microsoft Android Emulator. It is superb, provides you functionalities more than Android Studio Emulator. And most important it is fast ( consumes 13MB only). It comes with Visual Studio 2015 Technical Preview. I am using it and happy with it. I downloaded and installed entire VS pack, I need to look how we can install VS Emulator only.

Visual Studio Emulator for Android

EDIT: Try https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/msft-android-emulator/

Upvotes: 21

Potassium Ion

Reputation: 2185

I would suggest playing around with the OpenGL settings. I have a dual-core (quad-thread) i3-2350M running on it's internal GPU, and I get terrible performance if I use SwiftShaders, but changing it to "Desktop Native OpenGL" (Extended Controls > Settings > OpenGL ES Renderer) makes it run smoothly.

If the device doesn't boot, play around with the OpenGL ES API Level setting and the GPU emulation setting in the device config.

I don't know why, but on my 2011 Intel processor, it makes a world of difference.

Upvotes: 4

Suman Astani

Reputation: 1191

Android Studio performance is greatly optimized in Linux. Windows system might be running different heavy programs in background. Linux is best suited to use available system resources efficiently. Recently I have install android studio in Kali Linux. The speed of emulator and studio performance is way better than windows.

And the software development tools gets downloaded faster from android SDK. As the packages are bundled in binary files. The size of binary files are low.

Upvotes: -1

r3dm4n

Reputation: 1225

My solution is Vysor . I get both of the best worlds. I don't put too much charge on my machine, but I can also see my real Android device on the screen so I don't have to reach for it, take my hands off the keyboard etc. Furthermore there are always some feature that don't work best on an emulator.

There is free version with ads and a payed one which compared to other solutions, won't break the bank.

Upvotes: 6

T.M

Reputation: 817

I wonder why nobody has mentioned the Visual Studio Emulator as an alternative. It's way faster than the native Android Studio Emulator.

Here's a link to performance comparison: https://medium.com/android-news/how-visual-studio-emulator-for-android-can-improve-your-android-development-9e17a6213839#.hlh7ba6ut

What's even better is that the apk files and even gapps (or any other flashable zip) can be installed just by drag and drop. However, the downside is that it requires Hyper-V which is only available on Windows (that too, from Windows 8 onwards). Other limitations (along with the description of the above) and other details can be found here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudioalm/2014/11/12/introducing-visual-studios-emulator-for-android/

Upvotes: 7

TapanHP

Reputation: 6201

HAXM is a way to make emulators fast for intel processors HAXM is the kernel driver part, and the user-space emulator part is based on QEMU - which means there is a branch of QEMU which uses HAXM (This QEMU branch is very android-emulator-specific (and also seems to be based on older version of QEMU).

But still when i used with my intel core i3 processor with 4 GigaBytes RAM it doesn't effect more to speed. So this wasn't a solution for me.

As i am using 4GB RAM cpu Emulator becomes RAM eater but for making it more convenient there are some ways I prefer Android*86 support based emulator. And as android studio now introduce Instant-Run So After first launch app installation became faster, but i always faced problem and seems like no-way to get out of this.

I also used Droid4x and it goes preety convenient to me but i can't found a way to install different api versions ,I used it with kitkat and it was faster then android emulator and it is also VT support enabled, So i found another way and a good solution that is Visual Studio Emulator You can read more about it here , The latest i used is LeapDroid its really a powerful See the comparisons here

I prefer to use Real device then emulators on 4GB ram PCs.

Upvotes: 1

Abdul Samad

Reputation: 524

Android studio 2.02 has been launched, it has faster emulators, if you want to go with third party, use Genymotion emulators, they are pretty fast

Upvotes: 2

LEMUEL ADANE

Reputation: 8836

Add some more RAM and use SSD drive. Android Studio is best run on 8 to 12 GB of RAM using SSD drives based on my experience.

Upvotes: 3

huisinro

Reputation: 1113

You can try our new Android virtual machine, Leapdroid, which is fully compatible with the original Android emulator. Since it uses virtualization technology, instead of emulation, it provides pretty much native speed. In addition, we use a new OpenGL technology called LeapGL, which performs OpenGL graphics in native speed. Our vm has the best performance compared to others.

http://www.leapdroid.com

Source code: https://github.com/leapdroid

Leapdroid is fully compatible with Eclipse and Android Studio, as it uses the same adb ports.

Upvotes: 7

Chintan Soni

Reputation: 25267

Gone were those days, when we used to run projects on slow Android Emulators. Today, Android Emulators are on steroids.. Yeah you heard me. No other emulators are as fast as Android Emulators. You can go to my blog for more details:

http://androidveteran.blogspot.in/2016/01/android-emulator-multi-touch.html

I have explained in details about new Android Emulators. Check it out.

Believe me they are as fast as your real device works.

Upvotes: 4

CyprUS

Reputation: 4239

If you can, switch to using Ubuntu for Android development. I switched to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS for Android development, and I am glad that I took the jump. All of the steps mentioned made little or no difference in the lag on Windows. Linux is the correct answer to all the problems you are facing

Upvotes: 2

Umer

Reputation: 1556

Update your current Android Studio to Android Studio 2.0 And also update system images.

Android Studio 2.0 emulator runs ~3x faster than Android’s previous emulator, and with ADB enhancements you can now push apps and data 10x faster to the emulator than to a physical device. Like a physical device, the official Android emulator also includes Google Play Services built-in, so you can test out more API functionality. Finally, the new emulator has rich new features to manage calls, battery, network, GPS, and more.

Upvotes: 2

abissa

Reputation: 173

I suggest you to use the Android phone for developing by USB Debugging. It gives better experience in testing the apps and a better output compared to virtual devices. Or you can also use the options mentioned in rest of the answers and can go with Bluestacks App Player, it is also a good option in case of non-availability of Android Device.

Upvotes: 5

Umer

Reputation: 1556

Good way to speed up Android Emulator and app testing is Install or Upgrade your Android Studio to Android Studio 2.0 version and then go to app open Settings/Preferences, the go to Build, Execution, Deployment → Instant Run. Click on Enable Instant Run. And After That This will ensure you have the correct gradle plugin for your project to work with Instant Run.