The latest version of the Android emulator comes with a feature called "snapshots." It needs to be enabled as a feature of each AVD. Luckily, this version also includes the ability to edit existing AVDs.
First, enable the feature:
Second, when launching the AVD, choose to load from the snapshot and save the snapshot. When a snapshot isn't found, the AVD boots up from scratch. As we all know, this takes quite a long time even on very fast machines.
Now, when you exit, the system will store off a snapshot of the state of the AVD. This takes a little while, depending on how much RAM is assigned to the AVD. After saving the state once, the AVD will now launch very quickly - usually in just a couple of seconds.
However, the exit is no longer super speedy and often triggers "Not Responding" type messages. If you always want to return to exactly where you left off, this is how it will work. Overall, the behavior is much faster. However, if you want it to come up clean each time, just make sure the first time you boot it's clean, then exit to save the snapshot. Now, when you launch the AVD, only check load from snapshot, but make sure save to snapshot is unchecked.
Now, the system will just load the AVD from the one snapshot you created and not save the state each time you exit. This means super speedy launches into a cleanly booted emulator as well as super speedy exits since the snapshot doesn't have to be saved each time.
You'll start to feel like you don't need to keep the emulators running all the time. You also won't necessarily go looking for a phone each time just to save the emulator boot-up time. (You'll still go after the phone or tablet when debugging for performance or with code bases that are otherwise slow on the emulator or other such reasons.)
How much difference does it actually make? Here are some test results running on a 6 core 3 GHz desktop with 8GB of RAM and a relatively speedy SSD:
That cuts the emulator launch time by 97%. Put another way, the cold launch takes 34 times longer. Taking these steps is well worth the minimal additional effort.
First, enable the feature:
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| Enabling Snapshots |
Second, when launching the AVD, choose to load from the snapshot and save the snapshot. When a snapshot isn't found, the AVD boots up from scratch. As we all know, this takes quite a long time even on very fast machines.
 |
| Enable Snapshot options |
Now, when you exit, the system will store off a snapshot of the state of the AVD. This takes a little while, depending on how much RAM is assigned to the AVD. After saving the state once, the AVD will now launch very quickly - usually in just a couple of seconds.
However, the exit is no longer super speedy and often triggers "Not Responding" type messages. If you always want to return to exactly where you left off, this is how it will work. Overall, the behavior is much faster. However, if you want it to come up clean each time, just make sure the first time you boot it's clean, then exit to save the snapshot. Now, when you launch the AVD, only check load from snapshot, but make sure save to snapshot is unchecked.
 |
| Don't save over old snapshot |
Now, the system will just load the AVD from the one snapshot you created and not save the state each time you exit. This means super speedy launches into a cleanly booted emulator as well as super speedy exits since the snapshot doesn't have to be saved each time.
You'll start to feel like you don't need to keep the emulators running all the time. You also won't necessarily go looking for a phone each time just to save the emulator boot-up time. (You'll still go after the phone or tablet when debugging for performance or with code bases that are otherwise slow on the emulator or other such reasons.)
How much difference does it actually make? Here are some test results running on a 6 core 3 GHz desktop with 8GB of RAM and a relatively speedy SSD:
- Cold launch of Android 3.0 emulator to a usable state: 4 minutes 35 seconds
- Snapshop launch of same Android 3.0 AVD: 8 seconds
That cuts the emulator launch time by 97%. Put another way, the cold launch takes 34 times longer. Taking these steps is well worth the minimal additional effort.
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