Question or issue on macOS:
Best Android Emulators For Mac
Emulate all Android applications on your Mac. All the file versions available to download off Uptodown for that app. Download rollbacks of BlueStacks App Player for Mac. Any version of BlueStacks App Player distributed on Uptodown is completely virus-free and free to download at no cost. 4.230.10 Oct 1st, 2020. Android is one of the leading operating systems on mobile phones. Would you like to have an Android emulator for Mac that is valid to test all kinds of applications directly on your computer? Download BlueStacks for free and you will be able to launch an Android virtual machine on Apple computers. Mac OS X El Capitan is the next step above Yosemite. This small simulator allows you to test the features of the OS before it is released next year! If you need help using the simulator, please message me via email (sabirmayo2@outlook.com) and I will reply as fast as I can. Nox for mac is free to download and you would be able to play high end android games easily on your mac. Nox app player allows you to emulate the android experience right on your mac computer. Mac OS is not very popular for high end games and therefore you can install Nox on your Mac and enjoy high end android games without any lag. What emulators are there for el Capitan that will run on a 2014 macbook air? Is there a Dreamcast or ps1 emulator.
First of all, yes I know there's a lot of topics similar to this issue, I did use the search function on stack overflow.
But most of the issue that were brought up seems to about long boot times.
For me, the emulator is so slow, simply sliding from one home screen to another is like watching a slideshow. I placed in more ‘RAM' into the virtual device but nothing changes.
How do I fix this?
I'm using a Macbook Pro 2010 on Mac OS X Lion.
How to solve this problem?
Solution no. 1:
On the latest version of the Android SDK there is support for x86 and native execution. Now it is possible to run the emulator at native speeds on a Mac but there is some work to do by hand.
First you need the latest SDK Tools rev.19+ and Platform tools rev.11+, the Android x86 Atom System Image for 4.0.3 to 4.4 and the Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAX) all this from the Android SDK Manager.
After this you need to install HAX, unfortunately the SDK Manager downloads an outdated version. There is the Intel-HAXM hotfix v1.0.8
When you create a new AVD to use this latest system image and enable the GPU support on it (at the moment the snapshot support are not compatible with GPU but it still worths it. The VM will boot up in just a few seconds anyway. Lifetime dress up challenge the game.
It considerably accelerates the development on Android, it is just a shame that it doesn't works like this out of the box.
Solution no. 2:
The bounty is still open incase anyone comes up with something better.
Android Emulator On Mac
But so far, the only solution I've found for testing android on Mac OSX is to use a VM. You can still build/install your app from Eclipse as normal using ADT/abd
See http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2011/10/11/getting-started-on-android-for-x86-step-by-step-guide-on-setting-up-android-2223-for-x86-testing-environment-in-oracle-virtualbox/ for step-by-step instructions.
Solution no. 3:
Try genomotion emulator!
Its very fast, and way lighter than the other simulators*!
- Go here https://cloud.genymotion.com/page/customer/edit/, and register
- Download the IntelliJ Idea/Android studio plugin, and the Application (works for Linux/Mac/Windows)
- Install the application. Install the plugin (Preferences/Plugins/Install from disc)
- Open application. Login with registration credentials. Download from genymotion's cloud an image (eg nexus7 w/o gapps)
- Select in IntelliJ/Android Studio the genymotion icon, and the select the path of the Application
- Run your app in genymotion emulator! Note: it will appear as 'USB Device' and NOT as emulator!
*I have tried nexus7 w/ intels HAXM. Its super fast too, but its very heavy! Genymotion is much lighter!
Edit2: some weird error I faced using this emulator. When running the emulator, I could add text input to EditText if physical keyboard language was not english!
Solution no. 4:
Some tips if you still want to try to use the default emulator:
1) Reduce screen size. Don't bother to build an emulator with 1280×800 screen, the emulator will choke on it as it only uses one CPU/process (not sure) to do all translation from ARM to MacOS and back again and does all of the screen rendering in software. I think the general recommendation is to stay with 800×480 or 1024×700. Less pixels = less lag. Heck try a 480×320, if its really bad on your machine.
How to solve this problem?
Solution no. 1:
On the latest version of the Android SDK there is support for x86 and native execution. Now it is possible to run the emulator at native speeds on a Mac but there is some work to do by hand.
First you need the latest SDK Tools rev.19+ and Platform tools rev.11+, the Android x86 Atom System Image for 4.0.3 to 4.4 and the Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAX) all this from the Android SDK Manager.
After this you need to install HAX, unfortunately the SDK Manager downloads an outdated version. There is the Intel-HAXM hotfix v1.0.8
When you create a new AVD to use this latest system image and enable the GPU support on it (at the moment the snapshot support are not compatible with GPU but it still worths it. The VM will boot up in just a few seconds anyway. Lifetime dress up challenge the game.
It considerably accelerates the development on Android, it is just a shame that it doesn't works like this out of the box.
Solution no. 2:
The bounty is still open incase anyone comes up with something better.
Android Emulator On Mac
But so far, the only solution I've found for testing android on Mac OSX is to use a VM. You can still build/install your app from Eclipse as normal using ADT/abd
See http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2011/10/11/getting-started-on-android-for-x86-step-by-step-guide-on-setting-up-android-2223-for-x86-testing-environment-in-oracle-virtualbox/ for step-by-step instructions.
Solution no. 3:
Try genomotion emulator!
Its very fast, and way lighter than the other simulators*!
- Go here https://cloud.genymotion.com/page/customer/edit/, and register
- Download the IntelliJ Idea/Android studio plugin, and the Application (works for Linux/Mac/Windows)
- Install the application. Install the plugin (Preferences/Plugins/Install from disc)
- Open application. Login with registration credentials. Download from genymotion's cloud an image (eg nexus7 w/o gapps)
- Select in IntelliJ/Android Studio the genymotion icon, and the select the path of the Application
- Run your app in genymotion emulator! Note: it will appear as 'USB Device' and NOT as emulator!
*I have tried nexus7 w/ intels HAXM. Its super fast too, but its very heavy! Genymotion is much lighter!
Edit2: some weird error I faced using this emulator. When running the emulator, I could add text input to EditText if physical keyboard language was not english!
Solution no. 4:
Some tips if you still want to try to use the default emulator:
1) Reduce screen size. Don't bother to build an emulator with 1280×800 screen, the emulator will choke on it as it only uses one CPU/process (not sure) to do all translation from ARM to MacOS and back again and does all of the screen rendering in software. I think the general recommendation is to stay with 800×480 or 1024×700. Less pixels = less lag. Heck try a 480×320, if its really bad on your machine.
2) If you can use an older version of the SDK like 1.6, do so. Some of the performance gets used up by the fancier home screens of Froyo and Gingerbread.
3) Allocate more memory to the emulator. If you are using eclipse:
Go to Preferences.
Select 'Launch'
ADD '-partition-size 1024' on the 'Default emulator option'
Click 'Apply'
You may have done this already but added for clarity.
[MC] Oops (3) was parition-size, -m is for memory.
Hope this helps!
