Visual Studio Emulator for Android - Install Gapps

Question

I'm using the new VS Android Emulator with Android Studio:

https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/features/msft-android-emulator-vs.aspx

It doesn't have Google Play Services installed... so I'm following this guide to install:

https://university.xamarin.com/resources/how-to-install-google-play-on-android-emulator

I've downloaded the proper Gapps file (in my case):

http://www.devfiles.co/download/7m2VdVjQ/gapps-kk-20140105-signed.zip

Now I've dragged and dropped the ZIP file onto the emulator... and it's just stalled at "copying file"... Is there anything else I need to be doing here in order to get Gapps installed? How long does this "install" usually take?

Answer 1

You could just use an Android Emulator image (AVD), similar to a VM image, one that has a Google Play services installed. That would be easier than trying to install it in the emulator. Usually, you can see this Android Studio under Tools > Android > AVD Manager and create a Virtual Device and select from the images which has Google Play Services already.

Answer 2

I was trying it out yesterday myself and had the same problem. Apparently, non of the drag and drop functionality worked. So this, is what I did to resolve the issue:

1. Use the Additional Tools (small >> icon) for the emulator and go to the SD Card tab.
2. Select a folder on your computer to sync with the virtual SD card.
3. Pull from SD card, which will create a folder structure on the selected folder.
4. Now copy the Gapps fill to the 'Download' folder.
5. Push to SD card. This will take a little while, and copy the zip file to your emulator.
6. Run a commmand prompt, and go to sdk\platform-tools in your Android SDK location and run adb devices.
7. If you see the your emulator in the list, then skip to step 9.
8. If you do not see emulator, run the following: adb connect <emulator ip>:5555 You can find the emulator ip, from within the emulator, go to Settings -> About Phone -> Status and IP section.
9. Next run, adb shell. This will give you a prompt to the android emulator.
10. Confirm the gapps file is there: ls /sdcard/Download
11. Now run, install_zip.sh /sdcard/Download/<flashablezip>.zip This should begin the flashing process.

Hope this helps in resolving the issue.

Answer 3

It seems that the emulator hangs trying to install files if it cannot find adb.exe.

1. Ensure you have the Android SDK installed

2. If you run regedit.exe and look at the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Android SDK Tools reg key, there is a Path string value that points to a location on disk. Double check to make sure that there is a copy of adb.exe located in the platform-tools directory under that path.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

Drag and drop doesn't work if you start the emulator from Visual Studio when you are running Visual Studio as an administrator. To be able to drag and drop run the emulator from the start menu (not as administrator) not from Visual Studio.

Answer 5

Now Docker + Hyper-V + Android Emulator is possible without needing VS Android Emulator (in fact they seem to be a discontinued job).

Now the Google's emulators work well even with Hyper-V activated.

More info here about how to make it work here (spoiler: it is a simple tick in a checkbox) https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/07/android-emulator-amd-processor-hyper-v.html