Launch android emulator (avd) using terminal with out android studio

In this post, we will see how to open android virtual device or avd with out opening android studio editor.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have downloaded Android SDK CLI or android studio. if not, then refer to android sdk download and setup

Perform all the steps including the environmental setup.

let’s get started to know how to launch the AVD without android studio –

List out all available emulators in terminal

Navigate to the emulator folder under Android SDK [Where you have downloaded android SDK], like for me emulators folder is under

/Users/<UserName>/Library/Android/sdk/emulator

OR

have the emulator path setup in environmental file in mac or env variable in windows, so you need not to care about the emulator path

export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=/Users/MyUser/Library/Android/sdk

Append PATH variable with the emulator and then tools path, as below [shown for MacOS]

export $PATH:$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/emulator:$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/tool:$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/platform-tools

Note : ANDROID_HOME is replaced by ANDROID_SDK_ROOT

Open cmd [for windows OS] or terminal [for MAC OS]

emulator -list-avds
pixelxlapi26

As you can see, the above command returns available emulators. [showing one result, as only one device is available]

Open specific emulator

Enter below command

emulator -avd <deviceName>

In my case, I should run the command

emulator -avd pixelxlapi26

this will pop up avd / android emulator

Hope that helps!