Make use of Android Studio’s ‘Instant Run’The Android team have recently made some huge improvements to Android Studio, including the addition of Instant Run. In this article, I’m going to share 6 tips and tricks for supercharging the Android SDK’s built-in emulator.Note, since Android Studio is now the recommended development environment for Android, all of these tips are geared towards Android Studio, although some of them will be applicable to Eclipse users, too. The good news is, the emulator doesn’t have to leave you tearing your hair out. A seriously long time.Despite this drawback, the emulator is still the best way to test how your app translates across multiple hardware and software configurations—so there’s no getting away from the fact: sooner or later you’re going to have to boot up the emulator.The emulator has improved in recent years, so it’s nowhere near as slow as it used to be, but testing on the emulator can still be a frustrating experience, particularly if you need to keep switching between multiple Android Virtual Devices (AVDs). Better get comfortable, because the emulator takes a long time to load. Amazon.com: Beelink GTR Mini PC Windows 10 Pro,AMD Ryzen 5 3550H Processor(up to 3.7 GHz) 8GB DDR4 256GB NVMe SSD+1TB HDD,Radeon Vega 8 Graphics,WiFi 6.However, the emulator does have one massive flaw, which becomes glaringly obvious the first time you launch it.Hot Swap: Instant Run can apply incremental code changes without having to relaunch your app or even restart the current Activity. In the best case scenario, your app won’t even need to restart — your code changes will appear in the running instance of your app, as if by magic.However, the way Instant Run applies your updates will vary depending on the nature of those updates and some updates are easier to apply than others: Instant Run iconClick either of these buttons and Android Studio will push your updated code or resources to the instance of your app that’s already running in the AVD, without requiring a full reinstall.Instant Run promises to make sitting around and waiting for the emulator to re-install your app a thing of the past. However, the next time you make changes to your project, you’ll notice a small, yellow thunderbolt icon appears within the ‘Run’ and ‘Debug’ buttons. If that sounds familiar, then you’re going to love Instant Run.The first time you hit ‘Run’ or ‘Debug’ with Instant Run enabled, Android Studio launches the emulator, loads your chosen AVD, and pushes your APK normally.
![]() ![]() You also need to set your project’s minSdkVersion set to 15 or higher.To get the best results out of Instant Run, you might want to try these additional tips and tricks: A cold swap is required for any structural changes such as adding or removing an annotation, instance field or static method signature, or changing your project’s list of implemented interfaces.To use Instant Run, you need to install the Android Plugin for Gradle version 2.0.0 or higher. Cold Swap: This swap is a bit slower, as your app is restarted (although not re-installed). A warm swap is typically required for changes in resources. Warm Swap: This kind of swap is still very fast, but Instant Run will need to restart the Activity before the changes appear in your app. This is the fastest type of swap. Any changes to your project’s Manifest will trigger a full build and deploy cycle. Set your project’s minSDK to 21 or higher. If you restart your app from the device, you won’t see any of the code changes you pushed since the last cold swap. However, if Instant Run doesn’t seem to be enabled, you can enable it manually by: If you experience this, then try adding your project folder to Windows Defender’s list of exclusions.Instant Run is enabled by default for projects that use version 2.0.0 or higher of the Gradle plugin. Some people have reported that Windows Defender Real-time Protect can cause Instant Run slowdowns. X86 images tabTo download additional x86 system images for different versions of the Android operating system, you just need to click the corresponding ‘Download’ link.However, if you see an error message when you try to create an x86 AVD, or nothing appears in the ‘x86 Images’ tab, then you may not have the Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM) installed.To install HAXM, launch the SDK Manager and make sure the ‘SDK Tools’ tab is selected. When you’re creating a new AVD, simply select the ‘x86 Images’ tab in the ‘System Image’ window, and then choose from one of the available x86 images. If your IDE and SDK are up to date, then creating an x86 AVD is generally pretty straightforward. Enable all of the options in this window, apart from ‘Restart activity on code changes.’The Android emulator supports system images that emulate two different CPUs: ARM and Intel x86.Using an x86 system image can speed up the emulator considerably, so this is the option you’ll typically want to opt for. In the window that appears, select ‘Build, Execution, Deployment’ followed by ‘Instant Run.’ Once HAXM is installed, repeat the process of creating a new AVD – this time, you should be able to create an AVD with an x86 system image, or at least download an x86 image if none are currently available.GPU emulation (sometimes referred to as GPU acceleration) is where the emulator utilises the host machine’s GPU to accelerate drawing options. Follow the onscreen instructions to install. In the window that appears, double-click IntelHAXM.mpkg to start the installation. Open the Android SDK folder on your computer, and navigate to Android/sdk/extras/intel/Hardware_Accelerated_Execution_Manager. Download HAXM installerUnlike most of the other items you download through the SDK Manager, the HAXM driver doesn’t install automatically. Virtual machine accelerationMany modern CPUs provide extensions for running virtual machines (VMs) more efficiently.You can use these extensions to run the Android emulator inside an accelerated virtual machine, which can improve the execution speed. Spend some time interacting with the AVD, and you should notice a speed improvement. My command looks like this:Cd /Users/jessicathornsby/Library/Android/sdk/toolsNext, launch the emulator you created (myemulator) with the -gpu on flag, for example:The AVD will launch with graphics acceleration enabled. In this example, I’m going to create an imaginatively-named myemulator AVD.Open your Mac’s Terminal (or Command Prompt, if you’re a Windows user) and then ‘change directory’ so the Terminal is pointing at Android SDK’s ‘Tools’ folder. Although ‘Use Host GPU’ used to appear in the AVD Manager, this option isn’t currently available in Android Studio, but the good news is you can still enable GPU emulation if you launch an AVD from the command line.To launch your AVD with GPU emulation enabled, create the AVD you want to use as normal. Emulator For Windows Amd How To Enable ThemMachdep outputIf you’re on Linux, you can verify whether your CPU has support for Intel VT tech by running the following command:Even if your development machine supports these virtualisation extensions, they may be turned off by default, so if you encounter problems then you may need to check your computer’s documentation, in order to find out how to enable them.You’ll also need to use an x86 system image, so if you don’t already have an appropriate AVD, then create an x86-based AVD configuration now. AMD Virtualization (AMD-V, SVM) extensions (Linux only).If you’re unsure what virtualisation technologies your Mac supports, then open the Terminal and run the following command:Check the output for any of the Intel virtualisation extensions. Intel Virtualization Technology extensions (VT, VT-x, vmx). Sonic the hedgehog game download for macYou can shave precious seconds off the time it takes the emulator to load by disabling the boot animation.Once again, this requires you to issue a few commands, so make sure your Terminal is pointing at the SDK’s ‘Tools’ folder. Although the emulator is only doing its job ( emulating a real device), being forced to sit through a boot animation isn’t going to improve your Android project. Disable the emulator’s boot animationBy default, the emulator displays a boot animation as it starts up.
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