In this blog, we will understand how to setup Genymotion Android Emulators.
Genymotion Emulator For Mac
Concept of Emulators is very good for some one who needs access to Android OS without worrying about hardware. But Google’s android emulators face some problems. Althogh it was claimed that with latest release there are significant improvements but its not true. Two main problems are:
- Google’s emulators are very slow and they take ages to boot up and also sleep very frequently, so they are not idle candidates for some one who needs to switch on or off emulators frequently.
- Also they eat lot of RAM, so if you have 2-3 Emulators open at the same time, your machine will become very slow. Any testers would need multiple emulators open at the same time.
GenyMotion is one of the top-rated Android Emulator software. As every product has some PROS & CONS. So, If you are facing any kind of problem while using GenyMotion, like features limitations in a product, system compatibility issues, unavailability for any operating system. Download Genymotion for Mac. The biggest and most obvious difference is that after installing this emulator, users need to register for a Genymotion account to be able to continue using it. And one more point, making Genymotion not really close and user friendly, that is because the way this emulator works is quite complicated.
Genymotion Emulators (https://www.genymotion.com/) have solved above problems very efficiently and thus i recommend using them for automation. Genymotion is free (basic plan) and they have some paid plans also. For this blog we will use free Genymotion.
Follow these steps to setup Genymotion emulators on mac OS:
Step 1) Go to https://www.genymotion.com/pricing-and-licensing/ and click on ‘Individual’ Tab and click ‘Get Started’.
Step 2) Register with your credentials, and login.
Step 3) Click on Download. wait for download to finish.
Step 4) Install the .dmg file and move it to ‘Applications’
Step 5) Launch ‘Genymotion.app’ from applications.
Step 6) The Genymotion application starts. A dialog prompts you to “Add a first virtual device”. Click Yes.
Step 7) Multiple devices are pre-listed. Select a device of your choice and click Next. Follow through the prompts.
Step 8) Once the device is created, select it and click Start.
Step 9) Device will start in no time. It has all the apps provided by Google’s Emulators and these emulator work with all ‘ADB’ commands also.
Step 10) Now go to terminal, and type this command to check the device:
adb devices
Step 11) Now to install the app, use these commands on termial
App will be installed on Genymotion emulator. Enjoy!!
Once you start using Genymotion Emulators, you will really fall in love with these.
Even if this might appear as an edge case I know a lot of Android devs using Genymotion emulator for Mac in their daily work, but emulators in general, are RAM eater that slow down the entire system.
Genymotion is an awesome Android emulator, the support is good and the installation is fast and simple: it simply works out of the box!
After experimenting some configurations, I’ve accomplished to run Genymotion on a Windows PC and make it available for connection from my Mac.
The solution has been tested on a local trusted network nevertheless, an SSH tunnel would be preferable.
This solution can be convenient if you don’t want to overload your Mac with the heaviness of the emulator or/and a long test suite takes some time to finish and in the meantime you need to switch to another emulator.
Precondition:
- Mac with Android SDK.
- Windows with Genymotion installed.
First of all, go to Genymotion settings > ADB > Select Use custom Android SDK tool and leave it empty, in this way Genymotion will not restart the local ADB when the external ADB will try to connect.
Now you need to open port 5555 and 5554 to let ADB connects to Genymotion.
On Start, go to Windows System > Control Panel > System and Security > Windows Firewall > Advanced Settings.
ADB remote 5555
Right click on Inbound Rules > New Rule
Select Port
Select TCP
In Specific local ports type 5555
Select Allow the connection
Uncheck Domain and Public if you need this rule for your home network only
Add a name to the rule I’ve called it ADB remote 5555
Now right click on Inbound Rules > New Rule once again and repeat the process for port 5554.
Use the same configurations, just specify 5554 in Specific local ports, and in the end call the rule ADB remote 5554
It’s time to start Genymotion and run our Android emulator.
Take note of the IP address of the emulator, from now on I’ll call it
And now it’s time to forward the incoming connections to the Genymotion emulator.
From the windows machine run command line as administrator: go to Start > type cmd > the first result will be CommandPrompt, right-click on it and select Run as administrator.
type
and hit return.
type
and hit return.
You can double check you typed correctly running this command
Game Emulator For Mac
and you should see something like this
Now kill adb on Win
And take note of the local IP typing
I’ll call it
Genymotion Player
Go finally to your Mac and restart the adb.
And connect to Genymotion by typing the IP of the Windows PC
Genymotion Emulator For Mac Os
This is the solution I found without using any external software for SSH tunnel or PuTTy, if you want to explore more solutions you can check these posts on StackOverflow