Download an Android emulator on your Mac OS X to run Google Play apps on your computer. An Android emulator runs a virtual device on your computer; it is like having an Android phone on your Apple computer. You can now play all your favorite mobile games like Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, The Simpsons Tapped Out, and Family Guy The Quest for Stuff or run your favorite mobile apps like Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Viber on your Mac computer.
There're lots of Android emulators for Mac as a common word among gamers. This article will introduce the best Android emulators for Mac for you to choose from. If you use a Mac almost exclusively, but you’re still an Android holdout, you can manage your device’s storage using a handy, free app called Android File Transfer. When Using Android Studio (PC and Mac) This program permits you to create and run different Android Virtual Devices, and if you have followed the Android Setup Guide and used a custom install for Android Studio then it should be installed and ready to use, so you can skip down to the section on Using The AVD Manager.
The Android emulator supports Mac OS X 10.6 and up (Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite) and will work for all Apple computers (Macbook Air, Pro, iMac, Mac Mini).
Download files:
Genymotion (you will need to create an account)
1. Install Genymotion (note: you do not need to install Genymotion Shell)
2. Install VirtualBox
3. Open VirtualBox, go to File > Important Appliance…, and import the Google Play OVA
4. Exit VirtualBox, open Genymotion, and double-click on genymotion_vbox… (this should open another window)
5. You are now running a virtual Android device with access to the Google Play Store (have fun!)
The virtual device will run like any other Android device
Please let me know if you have any questions.
This is the second post that I dedicate to talk about configurations using the new M1 Apple processor. As I said in the previous post, these configurations are workarounds until stable versions are released, however, for me, they have been useful and I guess that someone in the same situation as me can benefit from that.
Using Android studio in the new Macbook Air
When you install Android Studio you will get the following warning:
Unable to install Intel® HAXM
Your CPU does not support VT-x.
Unfortunately, your computer does not support hardware-accelerated virtualization.
Here are some of your options:
1 - Use a physical device for testing
2 - Develop on a Windows/OSX computer with an Intel processor that supports VT-x and NX
3 - Develop on a Linux computer that supports VT-x or SVM
4 - Use an Android Virtual Device based on an ARM system image
(This is 10x slower than hardware-accelerated virtualization)
Creating Android virtual device
Android virtual device Pixel_3a_API_30_x86 was successfully created
And also in the Android virtual device (AVD) screen you will read the following warning:
If you want to learn more regarding virtualization in processors you can read the following Wikipedia article, the thing is that our M1 processor doesn’t support VT-x, however, we have options to run an Android Virtual Device.
As the previous message was telling us, we have 4 options. The easiest way to proceed is to use a physical device, but what if you haven’t one available at the moment you are developing?
From now on, we will go with the option of using an Android virtual device based on an ARM system image as options 2 and 3 are not possible to execute.
Using the virtual emulator
Android Virtual Device Manager Windows
The only thing that you have to do is to download the last available emulator for Apple silicon processors from Github https://github.com/741g/android-emulator-m1-preview/releases/tag/0.2
Once you have downloaded you have to right-click to the .dmg file and click open to skip the developer verification.
After installing the virtual emulator, we have to open it from the Applications menu.
After opening it you will see Virtual emulator in Android Studio available to deploy your Android application. Make sure to have Project tools available in Android Studio (View -> Tool Windows -> Project)
After pressing the launch button you will get your Android application running in your ARM virtual emulator :-)
Conclusion
Android Virtual Device Samsung
In this post, we have seen that is possible to install Android Studio in Macbook Air M1 and use a virtual device even that your M1 doesn’t support VT-x. You can learn more about this emulator in the following references: