Speed up Android emulator

Question

I read on many other topics that the Android emulator starts really slow. Indeed, it takes +15 mins to start. However, on my machine is slow even after that.

The 'phone' responds with a 3-4 seconds delay and everything has a huge lag.

Is there any way to improve the performance of my laptop (Asus 1201N) is too rusty for the Android emulator?

PS: Tried in different emulator resolutions and the result is the same

Edit: My laptop has 2 cores with HyperThreading. And it shows as 4 CPU in Device Manager. However, when using the emulator, just one of the graphs is at 100%. Can I do something to make it work multi core?

Answer 1

One thing I learned that helped me is that once the emulator is open from your first debug run you DO NOT have to close it. Leave it open, and on your next debug run it will be ready to go without any load up time like when you first open it.

In regards to your slowness after startup I suspect it's just your computer. It runs very fast for me. It starts up in about 20 seconds or less, and once it's open my subsequent debugs load very fast.

I hope at least my first tip helps to save some of your sanity.

Answer 2

Do you have "Disable Boot Animation" checked?

Also, if that doesn't fix it, one thing that helps is that you never actually have to close the emulator screen while you're coding. If you click debug when it's already open, your APK will get uploaded to the emulator and start pretty much immediately. For some reason it took me a while to figure out that I didn't have to manually close the emulator.

Answer 3

I had the same problem and in order to solve it I just disabled all the transition animation effects that are enabled under Spare Parts.

Answer 4

I discovered that instead of running the 'Debug' target, I just run the 'Run' target. The emulator runs a lot smoother when doing so. I only jump into debug mode if I really need it.