Quick Tip

Use Standalone Visual Studio Emulator for testing Android Apps

Microsoft is now providing Visual Studio Emulator for Android which can be used to deploy, test and debug Android apps. It also comes with a standalone version which can be used for quickly testing your APK files without needing Visual Studio which is very helpful for hybrid apps which are not built using standard development tools. For example if you have built your app using cordova and are looking for testing your app on a few emulators and are short of actual physical devices then this emulator comes handy which currently has support up to Marshmallow (API level 23). Download the standalone emulator installer from https://aka.ms/vscomemudownload Click on the installer and go through the installation process. It uses Hyper-V for running the emulator so it may ask you to confirm on activating it. Once it is installed you can open the emulator by searching for “Visual Studio Emulator for Android” in your windows[…]