Visual Studio 2017 Emulator for Android?

Question

User213349 posted

Hi,

I have just installed Visual Studio 2017 and I can't find how to install Visual Studio Emulator for Android as downloading from this link https://visualstudio.com/vs/msft-android-emulator/ does not install on VS 2017.

Thanks in advanced,

Asaf

Answer 1

User180523 posted

@Asaf70 Are you not seeing VS emulators already installed? They were for me. I didn't need to run anything additional for them.

Answer 2

User213349 posted

this is AVD not https://visualstudio.com/vs/msft-android-emulator/

Answer 3

User180523 posted

So the four at the bottom such as. VisualStudioandroid-23x86_tablet - aren't Microsoft's Visual Studio x86 emulators?

I'm not being snarky - I'm serious. I rarely use emulator. Maybe 3 times in the last year. The only reason I ran one last night was to see if they loaded at all, and because I might be interested in trying the Inspector again, and it doesn't work on physical devices.

Answer 4

User180523 posted

So I downloaded the installer and ran it. It reports successful.

Frankly I don't know enough about these to see how they are accessed from within VS2017 so I'm stumbling around in the dark - but it seems like its manager runs.

I launched the 5" KitKat emulator from the green 'play' icon in the manager. It didn't look like anything happened or was running... The Manger had shown "launching" etc. then went back to the same screen. Until I noticed it was now showing the 5" KitKat emulator in VS2017

Since I had the Xamarin University XAM320 course work handy (recertification time) opened that with VS2017 and gave it a go on that new emulator. Yep it works - I realized later the emulator launched on the 3rd monitor BEHIND my Firefox window.

Answer 5

User42522 posted

I already have VSE4A and using them in VS2015 without any issue. But when I installed VS2017 yesterday, I don't see VSE4A emulators in the dropdown. It appears, as per @ClintStLaurent , I will have to first launch it from the Manager before seeing them in VS2017 dropdown. But why so? That was not the behavior with VS2015.

Similarly, though the iOS simulators are shown in the VS2017's dropdown, I couldn't deploy to them in VS2017 until I have first started an iOS simulator by deploying an app to them from VS2015.

So I am missing something. What is it?

Answer 6

User305793 posted

Just run your device in Visual Studio Emulator for Android and you will see it listed in VS 2017

Answer 7

User213349 posted

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/34d06dea-0bb4-4c67-a115-d739f7be91c7/visual-studio-2017-emulator-for-android?forum=vssetup&prof=required

Answer 8

User42522 posted

@Asaf70 said: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/34d06dea-0bb4-4c67-a115-d739f7be91c7/visual-studio-2017-emulator-for-android?forum=vssetup&prof=required

Thanks @Asaf70 , This resolved my Android Emulators issue.

Answer 9

User183091 posted

@Asaf70 said: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/34d06dea-0bb4-4c67-a115-d739f7be91c7/visual-studio-2017-emulator-for-android?forum=vssetup&prof=required

thank you, this is the solution for me :smile:

Answer 10

User326792 posted

My Visual Studios 2017 doesn't have it pre-installed unlike other people.

I checked the emulators and I don't have the option to download the Visual Studio Emulator for Android. I can't deploy anything because of this. What do I do???

Answer 11

User42522 posted

@Andiii Are you using VS 2017 Community edition? I don't think the VS Emulators for Android available in Community edition. You may have to get either Professional or Enterprise edition. I have Enterprise ed.

Answer 12

User90290 posted

@Andiii Your selections there are specifically for the Google AVD emulators - not the Visual Studio Emulator for Android.

Please note that I would strongly suggest using the Google AVD emulators for testing.

The Visual Studio Emulator for Android was created as a replacement for the Google AVD when the Google emulators were limited to ARM images which ran excruciatingly slow. For some time Google have provided Intel images which, alongside the HAXM driver, run as fast as (if not faster) than the Visual Studio Emulator for Android.

Note: Google removed the GUI tools in the latest version of the Android SDK, meaning you'll either need to use the CLI or use Android Studio to manage your emulators. We're working something to replace this.

Answer 13

User401 posted

@AlanClark said:

Please note that I would strongly suggest using the Google AVD emulators for testing.

So how can we do that? Im using a Windows 10 with Hyper-V activated because it's required for UWP. So I can run Hyper-V or HAXM. The Visual Studio Emulators are absolutely necessary to develop the important platforms on the same machine without changing the boot mode all the time. I would prefer the official Google Emulators too but I'm doing multi-platform-development and a reboot is just no option. I could stick to the crazy slow ARM builds but that can't be serious a solution.

Answer 14

User42522 posted

@Matthias said:

@AlanClark said:

Please note that I would strongly suggest using the Google AVD emulators for testing.

So how can we do that? Im using a Windows 10 with Hyper-V activated because it's required for UWP. So I can run Hyper-V or HAXM. The Visual Studio Emulators are absolutely necessary to develop the important platforms on the same machine without changing the boot mode all the time. I would prefer the official Google Emulators too but I'm doing multi-platform-development and a reboot is just no option. I could stick to the crazy slow ARM builds but that can't be serious a solution.

Your options are:

1. Use Visual Studio Professional / Enterprise version.
2. Test on real Android devices. Some models are quite cheap.
3. Use testing in cloud through either Xamarin Test Cloud, VSTS, or Microsoft Mobile Center. But this does cost or very limited test time. Also you can't test everything.

Answer 15

User401 posted

How is 1. an solution for the problem? At the moment Visual Studio Emulators are "old" because the highest API level is 23 that's more than a year behind the current ones and we are already approaching API level 26. 2. Is an option for some problems but if you want to test general stuff on different screen configurations it's a lot easier with an emulator. 3. Is no option for daily business.

Thanks for the options but none of these are an answer to my question. A Xamarin official made a statement to use the Google emulators and Microsoft hasn't updated their own emulators for a year so I do a wild guess and say Visual Studio Emulators are DEAD. So instead of improving their multi platform development environment they made it lack a feature again.

Answer 16

User90290 posted

@Matthias said:

So how can we do that? Im using a Windows 10 with Hyper-V activated because it's required for UWP. So I can run Hyper-V or HAXM. The Visual Studio Emulators are absolutely necessary to develop the important platforms on the same machine without changing the boot mode all the time. I would prefer the official Google Emulators too but I'm doing multi-platform-development and a reboot is just no option. I could stick to the crazy slow ARM builds but that can't be serious a solution.

We're aware of the issue and we're working on a solution. In the mean time, if you need to test a later API levels using the Google AVD and don't have a device then one option would be to run UWP apps natively and disable Hyper-V.

Answer 17

User351573 posted

Hi @ShantimohanElchuri I have VS2017 community edition. Are you sure vs emulators are not work in the community?

Answer 18

User6349 posted

So, silly question here... but is it possible to run the Android Emulator in a Hyper-V Virtual Machine? I can get the Visual Studio Emulator for Android working but do not see how to deploy my simple Android project to it. Additionally, when I try the Xamarin Emulator, I get the following:

1>C:\PROGRA~2\Android\ANDROI~1\tools\emulator.EXE -partition-size 512 -no-boot-anim -no-accel -avd AndroidAcceleratedx86Nougat -prop monodroid.avdname=AndroidAcceleratedx86Nougat 1>emulator: WARNING: x86 emulation may not work without hardware acceleration! 1>Hax is disabled 1>init: Could not find wglGetExtensionsStringARB! 1>getGLES2ExtensionString: Could not find GLES 2.x config! 1>Failed to obtain GLES 2.x extensions string! 1>Could not initialize emulated framebuffer 1>Failed to open the HAX device! 1>Open HAX device failed 1>audio: Failed to create voice `goldfishaudioin' 1>qemu-system-i386.exe: warning: opening audio input failed 1>emulator: Listening for console connections on port: 5554 1>emulator: Serial number of this emulator (for ADB): emulator-5554 1>emulator: ERROR: Could not initialize OpenglES emulation, use '-gpu off' to disable it. 1>Emulator AndroidAcceleratedx86_Nougat cannot be started.

Answer 19

User6349 posted

Nevermind... I thought I had saw somewhere in the documentation that HAXM can't be installed on a virtual machine. But I obviously misunderstood. Installing this on the virtual machine worked and now I have a working emulator! WOOHOO!