A GitHub Action for installing, configuring and running hardware-accelerated Android Emulators on Linux and macOS virtual machines.

The old ARM-based emulators were slow and are no longer supported by Google. The modern Intel Atom (x86 and x86_64) emulators can be fast, but rely on two forms of hardware acceleration to reach their peak potential: Graphics Acceleration, e.g. emulator -gpu host and Virtual Machine(VM) Acceleration, e.g. emulator -accel on. Note: GPU and VM Acceleration are two different and non-mutually exclusive forms of Hardware Acceleration.

This presents a challenge when running emulators on CI especially when running emulators within a docker container, because Nested Virtualization must be supported by the host VM which isn't the case for most cloud-based CI providers due to infrastructural limits. If you want to learn more about Emulators on CI, here's an article Yang wrote: Running Android Instrumented Tests on CI.

Running hardware accelerated emulators on Linux runners

GitHub's larger Linux runners support running hardware accelerated emulators which is free for public GitHub repos. It is now recommended to use the Ubuntu (ubuntu-latest) runners which are 2-3 times faster than the macOS ones which are also a lot more expensive. Remember to enable KVM in your workflow before running this action:

- name: Enable KVM group perms
  run: |
    echo 'KERNEL=="kvm", GROUP="kvm", MODE="0666", OPTIONS+="static_node=kvm"' | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/99-kvm4all.rules
    sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
    sudo udevadm trigger --name-match=kvm

A note on VM Acceleration and why we don't need HAXM anymore

According to this documentation, "on Mac OS X v10.10 Yosemite and higher, the Android Emulator uses the built-in Hypervisor.Framework by default, and falls back to using Intel HAXM if Hypervisor.Framework fails to initialize." This means that HAXM is only needed to achieve VM Acceleration if this default Hypervisor is not available on macOS machines.

Note: Manually enabling and downloading HAXM is not recommended because it is redundant and not needed (see above), and for users of macOS 10.13 High Sierra and higher: macOS 10.13 disables installation of kernel extensions by default. Because Intel HAXM is a kernel extension, we would need to manually enable its installation on the base runner VM. Furthermore, manually trying to install HAXM on a Github Runner brings up a popup which further hinders tests from running.

Purpose

This action helps automate and configure the process of setting up an emulator and running your tests by doing the following:

• Install / update the required Android SDK components including build-tools, platform-tools, platform (for the required API level), emulator and system-images (for the required API level).
• Create a new instance of AVD with the provided configurations.
• Launch a new Emulator with the provided configurations.
• Wait until the Emulator is booted and ready for use.
• Run a custom script provided by user once the Emulator is up and running - e.g. ./gradlew connectedCheck.
• Kill the Emulator and finish the action.

Usage & Examples

A workflow that uses android-emulator-runner to run your instrumented tests on API 29:

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Enable KVM
        run: |
          echo 'KERNEL=="kvm", GROUP="kvm", MODE="0666", OPTIONS+="static_node=kvm"' | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/99-kvm4all.rules
          sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
          sudo udevadm trigger --name-match=kvm

      - name: run tests
        uses: reactivecircus/android-emulator-runner@v2
        with:
          api-level: 29
          script: ./gradlew connectedCheck

We can also leverage GitHub Actions's build matrix to test across multiple configurations:

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        api-level: [21, 23, 29]
        target: [default, google_apis]
    steps:
      - name: checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Enable KVM
        run: |
          echo 'KERNEL=="kvm", GROUP="kvm", MODE="0666", OPTIONS+="static_node=kvm"' | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/99-kvm4all.rules
          sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
          sudo udevadm trigger --name-match=kvm

      - name: run tests
        uses: reactivecircus/android-emulator-runner@v2
        with:
          api-level: ${{ matrix.api-level }}
          target: ${{ matrix.target }}
          arch: x86_64
          profile: Nexus 6
          script: ./gradlew connectedCheck

If you need specific versions of NDK and CMake installed:

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Enable KVM
        run: |
          echo 'KERNEL=="kvm", GROUP="kvm", MODE="0666", OPTIONS+="static_node=kvm"' | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/99-kvm4all.rules
          sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
          sudo udevadm trigger --name-match=kvm

      - name: run tests
        uses: reactivecircus/android-emulator-runner@v2
        with:
          api-level: 29
          ndk: 21.0.6113669
          cmake: 3.10.2.4988404
          script: ./gradlew connectedCheck

We can significantly reduce emulator startup time by setting up AVD snapshot caching:

1. add a gradle/actions/setup-gradle@v3 step for caching Gradle, more details see #229
2. add an actions/cache@v4 step for caching the avd
3. add a reactivecircus/android-emulator-runner@v2 step to generate a clean snapshot - specify emulator-options without no-snapshot
4. add another reactivecircus/android-emulator-runner@v2 step to run your tests using existing AVD / snapshot - specify emulator-options with no-snapshot-save

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        api-level: [21, 23, 29]
    steps:
      - name: checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Enable KVM
        run: |
          echo 'KERNEL=="kvm", GROUP="kvm", MODE="0666", OPTIONS+="static_node=kvm"' | sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/99-kvm4all.rules
          sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
          sudo udevadm trigger --name-match=kvm

      - name: Gradle cache
        uses: gradle/actions/setup-gradle@v3

      - name: AVD cache
        uses: actions/cache@v4
        id: avd-cache
        with:
          path: |
            ~/.android/avd/*
            ~/.android/adb*
          key: avd-${{ matrix.api-level }}

      - name: create AVD and generate snapshot for caching
        if: steps.avd-cache.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
        uses: reactivecircus/android-emulator-runner@v2
        with:
          api-level: ${{ matrix.api-level }}
          force-avd-creation: false
          emulator-options: -no-window -gpu swiftshader_indirect -noaudio -no-boot-anim -camera-back none
          disable-animations: false
          script: echo "Generated AVD snapshot for caching."

      - name: run tests
        uses: reactivecircus/android-emulator-runner@v2
        with:
          api-level: ${{ matrix.api-level }}
          force-avd-creation: false
          emulator-options: -no-snapshot-save -no-window -gpu swiftshader_indirect -noaudio -no-boot-anim -camera-back none
          disable-animations: true
          script: ./gradlew connectedCheck

Configurations

Input	Required	Default	Description
api-level	Required	N/A	API level of the platform system image - e.g. 23 for Android Marshmallow, 29 for Android 10. Minimum API level supported is 15.
target	Optional	default	Target of the system image - default, google_apis, playstore, android-wear, android-wear-cn, android-tv, google-tv, aosp_atd or google_atd. Note that aosp_atd and google_atd currently require the following: api-level: 30, arch: x86 or arch: arm64-v8 and channel: canary.
arch	Optional	x86	CPU architecture of the system image - x86, x86_64 or arm64-v8a. Note that x86_64 image is only available for API 21+. arm64-v8a images require Android 4.2+ and are limited to fewer API levels (e.g. 30).
profile	Optional	N/A	Hardware profile used for creating the AVD - e.g. Nexus 6. For a list of all profiles available, run avdmanager list device.
cores	Optional	2	Number of cores to use for the emulator (hw.cpu.ncore in config.ini).
ram-size	Optional	N/A	Size of RAM to use for this AVD, in KB or MB, denoted with K or M. - e.g. 2048M
heap-size	Optional	N/A	Heap size to use for this AVD, in KB or MB, denoted with K or M. - e.g. 512M
sdcard-path-or-size	Optional	N/A	Path to the SD card image for this AVD or the size of a new SD card image to create for this AVD, in KB or MB, denoted with K or M. - e.g. path/to/sdcard, or 1000M.
disk-size	Optional	N/A	Disk size, or partition size to use for this AVD. Either in bytes or KB, MB or GB, when denoted with K, M or G. - e.g. 2048M
avd-name	Optional	test	Custom AVD name used for creating the Android Virtual Device.
force-avd-creation	Optional	true	Whether to force create the AVD by overwriting an existing AVD with the same name as avd-name - true or false.
emulator-boot-timeout	Optional	600	Emulator boot timeout in seconds. If it takes longer to boot, the action would fail - e.g. 300 for 5 minutes.
emulator-options	Optional	See below	Command-line options used when launching the emulator (replacing all default options) - e.g. -no-window -no-snapshot -camera-back emulated.
disable-animations	Optional	true	Whether to disable animations - true or false.
disable-spellchecker	Optional	false	Whether to disable spellchecker - true or false.
disable-linux-hw-accel	Optional	auto	Whether to disable hardware acceleration on Linux machines - true, false or auto.
enable-hw-keyboard	Optional	false	Whether to enable hardware keyboard - true or false.
emulator-build	Optional	N/A	Build number of a specific version of the emulator binary to use e.g. 6061023 for emulator v29.3.0.0.
working-directory	Optional	./	A custom working directory - e.g. ./android if your root Gradle project is under the ./android sub-directory within your repository. Will be used for script & pre-emulator-launch-script.
ndk	Optional	N/A	Version of NDK to install - e.g. 21.0.6113669
cmake	Optional	N/A	Version of CMake to install - e.g. 3.10.2.4988404
channel	Optional	stable	Channel to download the SDK components from - stable, beta, dev, canary
script	Required	N/A	Custom script to run - e.g. to run Android instrumented tests on the emulator: ./gradlew connectedCheck
pre-emulator-launch-script	Optional	N/A	Custom script to run after creating the AVD and before launching the emulator - e.g. ./adjust-emulator-configs.sh

Default emulator-options: -no-window -gpu swiftshader_indirect -no-snapshot -noaudio -no-boot-anim.

Who is using Android Emulator Runner?

These are some of the open-source projects using (or used) Android Emulator Runner:

• coil-kt/coil
• cashapp/sqldelight
• square/workflow-kotlin
• square/retrofit
• natario1/CameraView
• natario1/Transcoder
• chrisbanes/insetter
• slackhq/keeper
• android/compose-samples
• ReactiveCircus/streamlined
• ReactiveCircus/FlowBinding
• JakeWharton/RxBinding
• vinaygaba/Learn-Jetpack-Compose-By-Example
• ashishb/adb-enhanced
• vgaidarji/ci-matters
• simpledotorg/simple-android
• cashapp/copper
• square/radiography
• Shopify/android-testify
• square/leakcanary
• hash-checker/hash-checker
• hash-checker/hash-checker-lite
• Kiwix/kiwix-android
• wikimedia/apps-android-wikipedia
• google/android-fhir
• google/accompanist
• dotanuki-labs/norris
• tinylog-org/tinylog
• hzi-braunschweig/SORMAS-Project
• ACRA/acra
• bitfireAT/davx5-ose
• robolectric/robolectric

If you are using Android Emulator Runner and want your project included in the list, please feel free to open a pull request.