Android Studio Emulator

Download and install Android Studio 3.0+.

Select "Standard" for the "Install Type" inside the wizard.

Inside Android Studio, go to Preferences > Appearance & Behavior > System Settings > Android SDK. Click on the "SDK Tools" tab and make sure you have at least one version of the "Android SDK Build-Tools" installed.

Copy or remember the path listed in the box that says "Android SDK Location".

If you are on macOS or Linux, add an environment variable pointing to the Android SDK location in ~/.bash_profile (or ~/.zshenv if you use Zsh) - for example:export ANDROID_HOME=/your/path/here. Copy and paste these two lines to do this automatically for Bash and Zsh:

[ -d "$HOME/Library/Android/sdk" ] && ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/Library/Android/sdk || ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/Android/Sdk
echo "export ANDROID_HOME=$ANDROID_HOME" >> ~/`[[ $SHELL == *"zsh" ]] && echo '.zshenv' || echo '.bash_profile'`

On macOS, you will also need to add platform-tools to your ~/.bash_profile (or ~/.zshenv if you use Zsh) - for example: export PATH=/your/path/here:$PATH. Copy and paste this line to do this automatically for Bash and Zsh:

echo "export PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools:\$PATH" >> ~/`[[ $SHELL == *"zsh" ]] && echo '.zshenv' || echo '.bash_profile'`

Reload the path environment variables by running:

source ~/`[[ $SHELL == *"zsh" ]] && echo '.zshenv' || echo '.bash_profile'`

Finally, make sure that you can run adb from your terminal.

On the Android Studio main screen, click "More Actions", then "Virtual Device Manager" in the dropdown.

If you already have a project, then the menu will show up under the three dots menu in the top right corner of the window.

Press the "Create device" button.

Choose the type of hardware you'd like to emulate. We recommend testing against a variety of devices, but if you're unsure where to start, the newest device in the Pixel line could be a good choice.

Select an OS version to load on the emulator (probably one of the system images in the "Recommended" tab), and download the image.

Change any other settings you'd like, and press "Finish" to create the virtual device. You can now run this device anytime by pressing the Play button in the AVD Manager window.

Open the terminal and check the adb version on the system:

And from the Android SDK platform-tool directory:

Copy adb from Android SDK directory to usr/bin directory: