Settings Up an Android Virtual Device(AVD) Emulator using Android Studio

To get hands-on experience with most of the concepts in this series, readers must have an emulator or a real Android device (preferably a rooted device) up and running. Firstly, we have to download and install Android Studio.

Android Studio is the official IDE for Android application development, based on IntelliJ IDEA. Eclipse used to be the IDE for Android Application development before Android Studio was introduced. 

Android Studio was in the early access preview stage, starting with version 0.1 in May 2013, and then entered the beta stage starting with version 0.8, which was released in June 2014. The first stable build was released in December 2014, starting with version 1.0.

Steps to Install Android Studio on Windows

Step 1: Download Android Studio and run the installer.

Step 2: Click next till the following window appears:

This window shows us the options for the tools to be installed. It is suggested you check to install Android Virtual Device (AVD), which is used to run emulators with Android Studio.

Step 3: Choose the installation location for Android Studio. If you don't have any specific choices, leave them to the default values.

Step 4: The following step allows us to choose the name for Android Studio in the start menu. Again, you can leave it to the default value if you don't have any specific choice.

Step 5: Continue the installation by clicking Next till the following screen appears. This finishes our Android Studio installation.

Step 6: When you click Finish in the preceding window, the following screen will be shown. 

If you have installed an older version of Android Studio, choose its location to import your previous settings. If this is a fresh installation on this machine, choose if I do not have a previous version of Studio, or I do not want to import my settings.

Step 7: Clicking the OK button will start Android Studio, as shown here.

Step 8: Once it is loaded, we will be greeted with a window, where we need to choose the UI theme. Select one of the themes and click Next.

Step 9: Clicking Next in the previous window will download the latest SDK components and the emulator. Before that accept the license agreement.

Step 10: Finally, click Finish and you should be greeted with the following window. This completes our installation:

Step 11: To create a new sample application, click Start a new Android Studio project.

Step 12: Select a Blank Activity, as shown here, and click Next:

Step 13: Choose a name for your app under the Application name. Let’s leave the options to their defaults.

Step 14: Finally, click Finish to complete the setup. It will take some time to build our first My Application app:

Wait for all initialization to finish when you see the previous screen.

Setting up an AVD

Step 1: Click on Tools at the top of the Android Studio interface, and then click on the Device Manager.

Step 2: This will open the following tab on the right side.

Step 3: Click the Create Virtual Device button. This will display a window.  

Step 4: Now, choose your device definition. I chose the Pixel 4 device with Play Store support, to create an emulator of large screen size.

Step 5: Click Next, and you will see the following window where you have to select a system image. From here you have to download a recommended system image to proceed further. 

Step 6: Finally, give your AVD a name and click Finish.

Step 7: Once you are done with the previous steps, you should see a virtual device, as shown on my screen.

Step 8: Select configured emulator, and click on the Play button, to start the emulator.

When it's ready, you should see an emulator interface. This process may take 5 to 15 min as per system performance, so keep calm and quiet.