Published: Jul 16, 2024

AVD without Android Studio

The following post will describe how to setup and launch an Android Virtual Device (AVD) without installing the full Android Studio IDE. This was tested on Windows 11 using PowerShell, but the steps are likely similar on other operating systems.

Requirements

  • Java (I used openjdk 22.0.1)

Setup AndroidSDK

  1. Download Android SDK “command line tools only” (bottom of page), unpack and move the files to a directory of your choice (avoid paths that include spaces, special characters or require admin permissions). I used $env:USERPROFILE\AndroidSDK.

  2. Inside the cmdline-tools folder create a latest folder and move all files into that folder (like “$env:USERPROFILE\AndroidSDK\cmdline-tools\latest”).

  3. Set the environment variable ANDROID_HOME to %USERPROFILE%\\AndroidSDK

  4. $env:ANDROID_HOME\cmdline-tools\latest\bin then run .\sdkmanager.bat --list which should list all available system images.

Setup AVD

To run an AVD you need build tools, the platform and a system image. To setup an Anrdoid 11 (SDK Level 30) device run:

.\sdkmanager.bat "build-tools;30.0.3"
.\sdkmanager.bat "platforms;android-30"
.\sdkmanager.bat "system-images;android-30;google_apis_playstore;x86_64"

Now select a device from .\avdmanager.bat list devices for example pixel_4. To create a new AVD run:

.\avdmanager.bat create avd -n "TestAvd" -k "system-images;android-30;google_apis_playstore;x86_64" --device "pixel_4"

Run AVD emulator

To run the emulator first switch to the emulator directory inside ANDROID_HOME then run emulator.exe -list-avds to list available AVDs. To run it:

emulator.exe -avd TestAvd

Tweaks

To enable the usage of your keyboard inside the emulator open %USERPROFILE%\.android\avd\TestAvd.avd\config.ini and add or edit following line:

hw.keyboard = yes

For better graphics performance you can try to add -gpu host like so:

emulator.exe -gpu host -avd TestAvd