How to install Android Emulator without Android Studio

Installing the Android SDK

• First, go to the Android Studio download page: https://developer.android.com/studio
• Then click in “Download Options”
• There you will find a table named “Command line tools only”;
• This table contain some zip files. Download the appropriate file for your system (Windows, Mac or Linux);

Create a folder anywhere you prefer to place your SDK. I recommend you to stick with one of these commonly used places:

## Windows:
# Globally: 
C:\Android\sdk or C:\android-sdk 

# One user only: 
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Android\sdk

## Linux
# Globally: 
/opt/android/sdk or /opt/android-sdk

# One user only: 
/home/<username>/.android/sdk

# Unzip the Unzip the commandlinetools-xxx.zip
# Put the extracted cmdline-tools directory under your sdk directory:
<sdk>/cmdline-tools

Install Java 8

# Windows:
https://www.oracle.com/ca-en/java/technologies/javase/javase8-archive-downloads.html

# Linux:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install openjdk-8-jdk

Download other essential packages

cd <sdk>/cmdline-tools/tools/bin

./sdkmanager platform-tools emulator

This will download the platform-tools and emulator under <sdk>

Set your environment variables

export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT="<your sdk directory>"
export PATH="${PATH}:${ANDROID_SDK_ROOT}/cmdline-tools/tools/bin:${ANDROID_SDK_ROOT}/emulator:${ANDROID_SDK_ROOT}/platform-tools"

Download a system image and other packages

./sdkmanager --list

sdkmanager --list | grep system-images

# You will see a lot of system-images. Pick a version to download with playstore. e.g.:
sdkmanager "system-images;android-30;google_apis_playstore;x86_64"

sdkmanager "platforms;android-30"

sdkmanager "build-tools;android-30.0.3"

Create an AVD device

avdmanager --verbose create avd \
 --name nexus5 \
 --package "system-images;android-30;google_apis_playstore;x86_64"

Add keyboard and GPU support

cd .android/avd/nexus5.avd

vi config.ini

# Change the following to yes
hw.keyboard = yes
hw.mainKeys = yes
hw.gpu.enabled = yes
hw.gpu.mode = auto

Run the emulator

emulator -avd nexus5

References:

https://medium.com/michael-wallace/how-to-install-android-sdk-and-setup-avd-emulator-without-android-studio-aeb55c014264

https://gist.github.com/mrk-han/66ac1a724456cadf1c93f4218c6060ae

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11235370/android-emulator-doesnt-take-keyboard-input-sdk-tools-rev-20