A GitHub Action for installing, configuring and running hardware-accelerated Android Emulators on 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 require hardware acceleration (HAXM on Mac & Windows, QEMU on Linux) from the host to run fast. This presents a challenge on CI as to be able to run hardware accelerated emulators within a docker container, KVM must be supported by the host VM which isn't the case for cloud-based CI providers due to infrastructural limits. If you want to learn more about this, here's an article I wrote: Running Android Instrumented Tests on CI.
The macOS VM provided by GitHub Actions has HAXM installed so we are able to create a new AVD instance, launch an emulator with hardware acceleration, and run our Android tests directly on the VM. You can also achieve this on a self-hosted Linux runner, but it will need to be on a compatible instance that allows you to enable KVM - for example AWS EC2 Bare Metal instances.
This action automates the process by doing the following:
- Install / update the required Android SDK components including
build-tools
,platform-tools
,platform
(for the required API level),emulator
andsystem-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.
It is recommended to run this action on a macOS VM, e.g. macos-latest
or macos-10.15
to take advantage of hardware accleration support provided by HAXM.
A workflow that uses aemulator-ui to run your instrumented tests on API 29:
jobs:
test:
runs-on: macos-latest
steps:
- name: checkout
uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: run tests
uses: reactivecircus/aemulator-ui@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: macos-latest
strategy:
matrix:
api-level: [21, 23, 29]
target: [default, google_apis]
steps:
- name: checkout
uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: run tests
uses: reactivecircus/aemulator-ui@v2
with:
api-level: ${{ matrix.api-level }}
target: ${{ matrix.target }}
arch: x86_64
profile: Nexus 6
script: ./gradlew connectedCheck
If you need specific versions of NDK and CMake installed:
jobs:
test:
runs-on: macos-latest
steps:
- name: checkout
uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: run tests
uses: reactivecircus/aemulator-ui@v2
with:
api-level: 29
ndk: 21.0.6113669
cmake: 3.10.2.4988404
script: ./gradlew connectedCheck
We can significantly reduce emulator startup time by setting up AVD snapshot caching:
- add an
actions/cache@v2
step for caching theavd
- add a
reactivecircus/aemulator-ui@v2
step to generate a clean snapshot - specifyemulator-options
withoutno-snapshot
- add another
reactivecircus/aemulator-ui@v2
step to run your tests using existing AVD / snapshot - specifyemulator-options
withno-snapshot-save
jobs:
test:
runs-on: macos-latest
strategy:
matrix:
api-level: [21, 23, 29]
steps:
- name: checkout
uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: Gradle cache
uses: actions/cache@v2
with:
path: |
~/.gradle/caches
~/.gradle/wrapper
key: gradle-${{ runner.os }}-${{ hashFiles('**/*.gradle*') }}-${{ hashFiles('**/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties') }}-${{ hashFiles('**/buildSrc/**/*.kt') }}
- name: AVD cache
uses: actions/cache@v2
id: avd-cache
with:
path: |
~/.android/avd/*
~/.android/adb*
key: avd-${{ matrix.api-level }}
- name: create AVD and generate snapshot for caching
if: steps.avd-cache.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
uses: reactivecircus/aemulator-ui@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/aemulator-ui@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
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 or playstore . |
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 |
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 . |
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-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 | true |
Whether to disable hardware acceleration on Linux machines - true or false . Note that this is true by default as Github-hosted Linux runners do not support hardware acceleration. |
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. |
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 |
Default emulator-options
: -no-window -gpu swiftshader_indirect -no-snapshot -noaudio -no-boot-anim
.
The short answer is yes but on Github-hosted Linux runners it's expected to be a much worse experience (on some newer API levels it might not work at all) than running it on macOS. You can get it running much faster on self-hosted Linux runners but only if the underlying instances support KVM (which most don't).
For a longer answer please refer to this issue.
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
- TestJken66/streamlined
- TestJken66/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
If you are using Android Emulator Runner and want your project included in the list, please feel free to create an issue or open a pull request.