Visual Studio Emulator for Android

Applies to: Visual Studio Visual Studio for Mac

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

The Visual Studio Emulator for Android is a desktop application to emulate an Android device. It's deprecated in Visual Studio 2015 and it's not supported in Visual Studio 2017 or Visual Studio 2019. We recommend you use the Google Android emulators instead. To see the Visual Studio Emulator for Android instructions for Visual Studio 2015, choose Visual Studio 2015 in the documentation version selector.

Important

In most scenarios, the Google Android emulator is recommended for use instead of the Visual Studio Emulator for Android:

• Visual Studio Emulator for Android isn't supported after Visual Studio 2015.
• Emulator images later than Android version 6.0 aren't available for Visual Studio Emulator for Android.
• The Google Android Emulator now supports Hyper-V.
• Both C++ for Mobile Device Development and Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova work with the Google Android Emulator. For more information, see Run your Apache Cordova app on Android. (You no longer have to disable Hyper-V as explained in this article).

For more information about configuring and using the Google Android emulator, see Android Emulator setup.