Android Emulator Alternatives: Genymotion

In Android emulators are very slow. It takes a lot of time to boot, to develop, to test. I am pretty sure everyone searched at least once for ways of improving their emulator’s speed, or for alternatives. I did. And not once, but many times. And now I discovered Genymotion. I must say that it’s a really good alternative to default emulator in Android. It runs very fast, I would say that it runs 50% times faster than the default emulator (I didn’t measure the actual speed but anyway, it is really fast comparing with what I was used to).

It is free for non-commercial use,  but you can also buy it if you want or need extra features. Genymotion can be downloaded from their, but first you have to create an account.  But let’s better write what we have to do step-by-step.

1. First, create an account on Genymotion

2. If you do not have Oracle VirtualBox on your computer you can download Genymotion with VirtualBox included from here. This way you will not need to download and install Virtual Box manually.

Update: You have to download VirtualBox now from here.

3.  Install Genymotion. You can follow the steps described on their site here.

Plugin Installation for Intellij/Android Studio

They also have a plugin which can be integrated into Genymotion. This plugin is very useful because this way you can run your Genymotion emulator right from Intellij. So in order to install the plugin you have to follow the steps below:

1. Open the Settings window (CTRL + ALT  + S) and on the left bar menu, select Plugins

Intellij Settings

 

2. Now click Browse repositories… button

Browse Repositories

3. In the search field from left top corner write “genymotion” in order to find the plugin easily. After you see it, click on it, and in the right window click on Install Plugin

install genymotion plugin

4. Click close and restart Android Studio/Intellij.

After you IDE restarts, you should see in the menu action bar, the icon of Genymotion.

genymotion icon

Genymotion with Google Play Services

  • Follow the steps from here

And this is it. Now your development speed should improve semnificatively :D. I have been using it for about 6 months and I really like it, so I hope you will like it too.

genymotion emulator

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