How to Open Android emulator without Android Studio

Let's see how to open Android Virtual Device (AVD) directly from the terminal without opening Android Studio!

First, we need to get our Android SDK location, here is a link to help you find it. For me (MacOS) is: /Users/<user>/Library/Android/sdk.

Now Open the .rc file in your favorite editor:

# if you use ZSH
nano ~/.zshrc
# if you use BASH
nano ~/.bashrc

Add this line at the final of the file (your Android SDK path with a /emulator:$PATH at the end):

  export PATH="/Users/<your-user-name>/Library/Android/sdk/emulator:$PATH"

Save the file and go back to the terminal and reload the new configuration:

source ~/.zshrc
#or
source ~/.bashrc

Now you can get it running from any location:

emulator -avd EmulatorName

To see all available emulators just run: emulator -list-avds.

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