Install Free Android Emulator. Download it now: here. Believe it or not, you can actually use VirtualBox to create your own Android emulator for Mac. Download VirtualBox on your Mac machine, and then set it up with the necessary ISO image from Android-x86.org. Step 1) Go to and click on ‘Individual’ Tab and click ‘Get Started’. Step 2) Register with your credentials, and login. Step 3) Click on Download. Wait for download to finish. Step 4) Install the.dmg file and move it to ‘Applications’.
Even if this might appear as an edge case I know a lot of Android devs using Genymotion emulator for Mac in their daily work, but emulators in general, are RAM eater that slow down the entire system.
Genymotion is an awesome Android emulator, the support is good and the installation is fast and simple: it simply works out of the box!
After experimenting some configurations, I’ve accomplished to run Genymotion on a Windows PC and make it available for connection from my Mac.
The solution has been tested on a local trusted network nevertheless, an SSH tunnel would be preferable.
This solution can be convenient if you don’t want to overload your Mac with the heaviness of the emulator or/and a long test suite takes some time to finish and in the meantime you need to switch to another emulator.
Precondition:
- Mac with Android SDK.
- Windows with Genymotion installed.
First of all, go to Genymotion settings > ADB > Select Use custom Android SDK tool and leave it empty, in this way Genymotion will not restart the local ADB when the external ADB will try to connect.
Genymotion Emulator Bl
Now you need to open port 5555 and 5554 to let ADB connects to Genymotion.
On Start, go to Windows System > Control Panel > System and Security > Windows Firewall > Advanced Settings.
ADB remote 5555
Right click on Inbound Rules > New Rule
Select Port
Select TCP
In Specific local ports type 5555
Select Allow the connection
Uncheck Domain and Public if you need this rule for your home network only
Add a name to the rule I’ve called it ADB remote 5555
Now right click on Inbound Rules > New Rule once again and repeat the process for port 5554.
Use the same configurations, just specify 5554 in Specific local ports, and in the end call the rule ADB remote 5554
It’s time to start Genymotion and run our Android emulator.
Take note of the IP address of the emulator, from now on I’ll call it
And now it’s time to forward the incoming connections to the Genymotion emulator.
From the windows machine run command line as administrator: go to Start > type cmd > the first result will be CommandPrompt, right-click on it and select Run as administrator.
type
and hit return.
type
and hit return.
You can double check you typed correctly running this command
Genymotion Emulator Windows
and you should see something like this
Now kill adb on Win
And take note of the local IP typing
I’ll call it
Genymotion Android Emulator For Mac Free
Go finally to your Mac and restart the adb.
Android Emulator For Mac Download
And connect to Genymotion by typing the IP of the Windows PC
This is the solution I found without using any external software for SSH tunnel or PuTTy, if you want to explore more solutions you can check these posts on StackOverflow