Google android emulator in Visual Studio 2015

For Windows you could either use Microsoft Visual Studio Hyper-V or Google android emulator.

If you want to use Microsoft emulator you have to use Windows Pro edition with Hyper-V support. You have to activate Hyper-V otherwise the emulator won’t work. If you will activate Hyper-V then you won’t be able to use Google android emulator, VMware or any other technology is not based on Hyper-V. Also despite the fact that Microsoft claims that her emulator is the fastest, on my machine, Google emulator boots about 4 times faster compare to the Microsoft emulator (10 s vs 40 s).

Anyway, I decide to use Google android emulator.

I faced a lot of problems in my way so I decided to describe it by steps.

1) Download and install the latest Android Studio and Visual Studio 2015 (check Xamarin, Android SDK, Android NDK options).

2) Download Google android emulator via AVD Manager/Create Virtual Device/Phone/Nexus 5/Recommended. Then choose API level 22.

3) Change Android SDK path and JDK in Visual Studio.

Tools/Options/Xamarin/Android Settings/Android SDK Location

Set to

C:\Users\USER_NAME\AppData\Local\Android\sdk

or other place where Android Studio usually puts it (I will call it ANDROID_STUDIO_SDK_PATH)

4) Change Java Development Kit Location:

Set path to a JDK 8 x86.

5) Change Android SDK path in the register :)

Open “regedit” and find the

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Android SDK Tools

Replace the existing path by ANDROID_STUDIO_SDK_PATH.

6) Restart the PC.

7) Run the Visual Studio. Then run the Google emulator Android Studio (or from a console). Then you should be able to see the emulator in the devices list.

Examle of a console command to run the emulator:

C:\Users\USE_NAME\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk\tools\emulator.exe -netdelay none -netspeed full -avd Nexus_5_API_22

8) If you have any problems fell free to write a comment.

9) Default Visual Studio paths, if anything goes wrong, are listed below.

JDK:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0_55

Android SDK:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk

Android NDK:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\AndroidNDK\android-ndk-r11c

Android SDK path in the register is the same as Android SDK.

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