Bill Gorder has suggested numerous times to use Genymotion instead of the emulator in the Android Development Tools because it is faster. This week, I downloaded it. I had to turn off the hardware acceleration in the ADT emulator SDK one as it caused instability on my Mac. It’s time to try something new.
Downloading appears simple and is described here. I already had a recent version of VirtualBox installed (I use it to run Linux, Windows 8 and Chromium.) I created a device and then tried to launch it. Which gave me the error “Unable to load VirtualBox engine.” It directs me to the FAQ which didn’t help.
Luckily, the answer was only a search away. I ran
Select the destination folder by clicking Browse. The default destination folder is C:Program FilesGenymobileGenymotion. Then click Next. Select the start menu folder by clicking Browse or check Don't create a Start menu folder and click Next. Select whether or not to create a desktop icon and click Next. Click Install and Finish. Genymotion for Mac. Genymotion for Mac is an easy-to-use Android emulator that has been designed to help app developers test their products within a safe, virtual environment. To install Genymotion for Mac, simply.
sudo /Library/StartupItems/VirtualBox/VirtualBox restart
and all was well. I didn’t even need to restart Genymotion. The problem is I need to run this command every time I reboot (or add it to my startup)
I then installed the Eclipse plugin into my ADT install. After setting the workspace preferences Genymotion item to /Applications/Genymotion.app. (For more on the plugin, see the docs). I was a little surprised that to run the plugin, you need two steps:
Genymotion Mac Os X Install
- Launch the genymotion device using the icon in the toolbar. (this isn’t a big deal; I was just surprised since the ADT emulator did it automatically)
- Run as/debug as Android application. If you have run configuration already, make sure it is set to “Launch on all compatible devices/AVDs” with the drop down set to “active devices and AVDs”. This is how Eclipse knows to connect to the Genymotion emulator and not the other ones.
Genymotion Mac Installation
Genymotion Emulator Bl
The interface is snappy which is nice. I also like that it works with adb so I can push apps.