The most annoying part of the whole Android development experience is the Android emulator. Even on up-to-date hardware it remains a slow beast.
Here are some general tips and recommendations to improve the experience:
- Tip 1: Avoid the emulator at all. Test on a real device when possible.
- Tip 2: Keep the emulator resolution as low as possible.
- Tip 3: Install the Intel HAXM and use an x86 emulator image instead of an ARM one.
- Tip 4: Use VirtualBox as an Android emulator.
- Tip 5: Create a snapshot and load the emulator from this snapshot afterwards.
- Tip 6: Use the BlueStacks player.