Is it possible to rename the emulator in Android Studio?

Question

Is there a way to give an emulator a name in Android Studio?

In the emulator pull-down box in Android Studio, the emulators created from AVD manager are labelled simply: "Android SDK built for x86 (mobile)(emulator-nnnn)", where n is an integer.

If you're running multiple emulators, this isn't very helpful. Is there a way to rename each emulator to something more helpful? For example, when I created each emulator, they have names of e.g. "Pixel 4 API 29", and "Nexus 5 API 24" - why aren't these used?

Update: Two screenshots show what I mean. In the top one, the "Nexus 5 API" has been selected; yet it shows as "Android SDK etc". If I select e.g. "Pixel 4 etc", it shows as exactly the same (it actually has an emulator number added that only shows when you open the pull-down).

Answer 1

You can not change the device name "emulator-nnnn" from Android Studio as that name belongs to the device. This is the name that you see in "adb devices" output.

For a real device, you have to change its name by opening the Settings app from the device.

For an emulator, in theory you can do the same, you open the Settings app inside the emulator when emulator is running. But I haven't tested this because my emulator is very slow.

Answer 2

Well what @Bruno said is the easiest way, if it does not work that way you can either try this one, is a little bit tricky though.

In case you use Mac that's an example of how to do it, if you do not use Mac let me know and I'll put the steps to do it on Windows / Linux

Open in Finder

user.name/.android/avd/

Pd: To be able to show the hidden files press ⌘ + ⇧ + .

Find your emulator, in my case I'll show this one :

Open the Pixel_4_API_30_-_Android_11.avd folder (in your case will be different) and open config.ini file and change these two params (AvdId,avd.ini.displayname)

And now restart your IDE and it should be updated.

I'm sure you could change more names, but to ensure the functionality of the emulator, I wouldn't touch too much if you do not know what you are changing.

Let me know if it works :)

Answer 3

Of course you can edit the name of your AVD.

In the AVD Manager, clic on the pen to the right to edit your configuration and then, you can rename your AVD

Edit: There names are correctly shown in the pull-down menu, even if launched