Possible to change where Android Virtual Devices are saved?

Asked 15/5, 2010 at 21:9 Answered 7/2 at 9:55

Solved windows android android-virtual-device

259

I've set up the Android SDK and Eclipse on my machine running Windows XP and AVDs (Android Virtual Devices) are saved to "Documents and Settings\user\.android" by default. Is there any way to change this behavior? I have all of the other components saved in a directory on a separate partition and would like everything to be consolidated. Obviously not a huge deal but does anyone here know a workaround for this?

Beeswax answered 15/5, 2010 at 21:9 Comment(6)

I have made virtual RAM disk which is 100x faster than SSD and moving emulator files to this disk speed ups emulator loading very much. – Falgout 15/5, 2016 at 7:30

@Falgout Can you elaborate please " RAM disk which is 100x " I want to speed up my emulator too – Nepheline 2/7, 2016 at 3:24

I use "SoftPerfect RAM disk" software to create virtual disk. Then I put android emulator files into this RAM-disk and setting emulator location. If you have HDD, then you will see big difference between emulator in HDD and in RAM. – Falgout 2/7, 2016 at 14:23

Save question: #3109973 – Dartboard 6/10, 2016 at 10:4

In 2021 this should be a couple of clicks. Why are things made so complicated? – Jacklight 24/11, 2021 at 11:28

@Jacklight still not easy to do in Android Studio in 2022 sigh. – Hyperostosis 2/1, 2022 at 8:12

343

Add a new user environment variable (Windows 7):

Start Menu > Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings (on the left) > Environment Variables

Add a new user variable (at the top) that points your home user directory:

Variable name: ANDROID_SDK_HOME
Variable value: a path to a directory of your choice

AVD Manager will use this directory to save its .android directory into it.

For those who may be interested, I blogged about my first foray into Android development...
Android "Hello World": a Tale of Woe

Alternatively, you can use the Rapid Environment Editor to set the environment variables.

Luben answered 10/1, 2011 at 15:0 Comment(17)

This should actually be the accepted answer. Straight forward and concise. Thank you wloescher. – Gilgilba 12/7, 2012 at 10:29

Thanks. Reading your blog entry was like reliving the first few hours of today mucking about with this. What a pain! – Sine 8/11, 2012 at 20:28

+1 for your info. but I am using xp. for me this will work after restart. Thank you. – Burbot 30/5, 2013 at 8:10

+100000000000000 You saved my life. I changed many times the value without effect (C:/Android, C:/Android/android-sdk, C:/users, ...), I have just to desinstall W8, but finally it seems work with you value as user variable and not as system variable as i was trying (i do not if this matter but it is working not). Thank you. – Owens 22/6, 2013 at 14:44

This also worked with Android Studio, which kept on creating a .android folder at the root of my workspace partition. I was finally able to put it in my home folder in Windows using this method. – Parshall 23/10, 2014 at 5:26

This isn't the answer that works. And it doesn't even seem to answer the question. Next answer by loftysnake did work for me. – Desdee 5/6, 2015 at 4:35

@AlexanderK I have modified the answer to remove the misleading information and add a precision about the path. It works but maybe you have to restart your user session. – Cataplasm 4/10, 2015 at 0:8

This approach works for me until I restart my computer. Win7. – Jamey 5/11, 2015 at 6:40

Or just type in cmd setx ANDROID_SDK_HOME D:\your\path\here – Toplofty 14/9, 2016 at 22:23

The ANDROID_AVD_HOME environment variable could be preferred to ANDROID_SDK_HOME as it avoids to move any of the user specific config stored in ~/.android so other users/distributions could so use the same AVDs. Worked nicely on Linux Debian. – Percuss 22/7, 2017 at 21:27

Works for me after restart on Windows 8.1. – Gradey 14/9, 2017 at 21:45

The ANDROID_AVD_HOME solution provided by John is clearest than changing all skd home, in my case, I previously change ANDROID_HOME, the wich changes SDK home but not AVD home, so I had to change AVD manually to some other folder – Kalsomine 23/3, 2018 at 16:48

I am confirming the ANDROID_AVD_HOME solution, but in general the answer as provided by @Luben is helpful to understand what is going on in the first place. Now I was able to keep the .android location, store the Android SDK to a custom location and store my AVDs in a different custom location. – Miscreant 29/5, 2020 at 1:24

To be working, the ANDROID_AVD_HOME environment variable has to point to an existing directory, or else the default avd directory will be used. – Gibbs 15/2, 2021 at 19:5

Note: Starting with Android Studio 4.2, the ANDROID_SDK_HOME environment variable is deprecated and has been replaced with ANDROID_PREFS_ROOT. – Disinclined 12/12, 2021 at 1:39

In Visual Studio 2022 (on Windows 10), neither ANDROID_SDK_HOME or ANDROID_AVD_HOME worked for me, even after restarting multiple times. :( The emulator just continues to get created on my C: drive (even though Visual Studio is installed to my D: drive, which is where I set the aforementioned Environment Variables to). – Thurmond 21/3, 2022 at 3:7

...or am I misunderstanding something here?...seems like Visual Studio's Adroid Device Manager downloads the files to create the emulator to the C: drive, unpacks them on the C: drive, but creates the actual emulator on the path I set in the aforementioned Environment Variables?...if so, that sucks, because it's still burning like 10 GB to download and unzip the files on the C: drive. :/ – Thurmond 21/3, 2022 at 3:41

Based on official documentation https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/variables.html you should change ANDROID_AVD_HOME environment var:

Emulator Environment Variables

By default, the emulator stores configuration files under $HOME/.android/ and AVD data under $HOME/.android/avd/. You can override the defaults by setting the following environment variables. The emulator -avd command searches the avd directory in the order of the values in $ANDROID_AVD_HOME, $ANDROID_SDK_HOME/.android/avd/, and $HOME/.android/avd/. For emulator environment variable help, type emulator -help-environment at the command line. For information about emulator command-line options, see Control the Emulator from the Command Line.

ANDROID_EMULATOR_HOME: Sets the path to the user-specific emulator configuration directory. The default location is
$ANDROID_SDK_HOME/.android/.

ANDROID_AVD_HOME: Sets the path to the directory that contains all AVD-specific files, which mostly consist of very large disk images. The default location is $ANDROID_EMULATOR_HOME/avd/. You might want to specify a new location if the default location is low on disk space.

After change or set ANDROID_AVD_HOME you will have to move all content inside ~user/.android/avd/ to your new location and change path into ini file of each emulator, just replace it with your new path

Kalsomine answered 23/3, 2018 at 17:2 Comment(3)

This should be the answer. Thank you. – Halfdan 17/2, 2020 at 17:38

I've had a problem with VSCode not seeing emulators after moving them to d:, because I only set ANDROID_AVD_HOME. Adding ANDROID_EMULATOR_HOME on top of that resolved it. Thank you. – Aristophanes 26/10, 2021 at 7:58

This should be the proper way forward... – Queston 20/4, 2023 at 6:9

Modify the file "virtual_android2.2.ini" in "C:\Documents and Settings{your windows login}.android\avd\":

target=android-8
path=E:\android_workspace\avd\virtual_android2.2.avd

And move the folder "virtual_android2.2.avd" from "C:\Documents and Settings{your windows login}.android\avd\" into "E:\android_workspace\avd\".

Clingstone answered 24/12, 2010 at 4:33 Comment(2)

This worked for me! A bit clunky having to do this for every emulator I create – Blues 30/5, 2017 at 9:34

After numerous complaints of VS' Android Emulator that there is not enough space to install or to start another virtual device, now everything is going smooth. – Mcandrew 19/8, 2020 at 12:1

Move your .android to wherever you want it to.

Then, create a symlink like this:

# In your home folder
$ ln -s /path/to/.android/ .

This simply tells Linux that whenever the path ~/.android is referenced by any application, link it to /path/to/.android.

Fattal answered 3/6, 2015 at 8:18 Comment(0)

Go to the Android tools directory. Edit the android.bat command file. At about the end of the command file, find a line similar to

call %java_exe% -Djava.ext.dirs=%java_ext_dirs% -Dcom.android.sdkmanager.toolsdir="%tools_dir%" -Dcom.android.sdkmanager.workdir="%work_dir%" -jar %jar_path% %*

and replace

call %java_exe%

with

call %java_exe% -Duser.home={your_prefer_dir}

where {your_prefer_dire} is your preferred directory without braces but add doublequotes,

e.g.

call %java_exe% -Duser.home="E:\Program Files (x86)\android-sdk-windows"

Yonita answered 11/7, 2010 at 11:53 Comment(2)

This worked for me, while the accepted answer didn't. Also, this actually answers what the OP asked, which was how to change from the user home directory to another AVD directory, not the other way around. – Variant 3/4, 2015 at 1:13

THIS MUST NOT BE DONE! SDK Manager complains about it and it doesn't find the new folder location... Use ANDROID_SDK_HOME under user environments and restart your computer might help - [.android folder will be created in %android_sdk_home%] – Apophyge 6/8, 2016 at 8:35

For Visual Studio 2017 on Windows 10

Copy C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\.android folder to (for example) E:\avd

Open the environment variables window:

Go into Settings and click on System.
On the left, click About and select System info at the bottom.
In the new window, click Advanced system settings on the left.
Click Environment Variables at the bottom of the resulting window.

Add a new variable:

Variable name: ANDROID_SDK_HOME
Variable value: a path to a directory (e.g E:\avd)

Don't include .android in the variable value.

Restart Visual Studio.

For change SDK & NDK location go to:

Tools -> Options -> Xamarin -> Android Setting

Stonechat answered 13/7, 2017 at 5:34 Comment(0)

In Windows 10 I had that problem because My C Drive was getting full and I had needed free Space, AVD folder had 14 gig space so I needed to move that folder to another driver, first answer not work for Me so I tested another way to fix it this problem, I make a picture for you if you have the same problem, you don't need to move all of the files in .android folder to another drive (this way not work) just move avd folders in ....android\avd to another drive and open .ini files and change avd folder path from that file to the new path. Like this image:

I hope this works for you.

Note: careful about a separate character before and after the path in ini file that you cannot see,if you remove that character it's not works

Jeaz answered 15/10, 2017 at 21:42 Comment(0)

Check this out. using the android command to create avd you can specify where to place files.

-p --path     Location path of the directory where the new AVD will be created

Everlasting answered 16/5, 2010 at 4:44 Comment(4)

Do you know of any way to do this through the setup utility and set it to default to a particular location? – Beeswax 16/5, 2010 at 15:56

Not really. I don't even use windows :( – Everlasting 16/5, 2010 at 21:16

Well like I said it's not a big deal, just thought there would be some way to control it more given how modular the whole SDK package is. Thanks for your help! – Beeswax 17/5, 2010 at 14:44

The link above is dead (developer.android.com/intl/zh-TW/guide/developing/tools/…) – Misstep 2/1, 2019 at 21:36

You can change the .ini file for the new AVD:

target=android-7
path=C:\Users\username\.android\avd\VIRTUAL_DEVICE_NAME.avd

I don't know how to specify where the .ini file should be stored :)

Dannadannel answered 23/6, 2010 at 8:9 Comment(1)

This works great. The .ini has to stay in the old folder. – Robertroberta 6/7, 2021 at 9:5

The environmental variable ANDROID_AVD_HOME can be used to define the directory in which the AVD Manager shall look for AVD INI files and can therefore be used to change the location of the virtual devices;

The default value is %USERPROFILE%\.android\avd on Windows (or ~/.android/avd on Linux).

One can also create a link for the whole directory %USERPROFILE%\.android on Windows (or a sym-link for directory ~/.android on Linux).

When moving AVDs, the path entry in AVD INI file needs to be updated accordingly.

Tecla answered 15/10, 2016 at 1:40 Comment(1)

This ANDROID_AVD_HOME environment variable could be preferred to ANDROID_SDK_HOME as it avoids to move any of the user specific config stored in ~/.android because other users/distributions could so use the same AVDs. On Linux, I exported ANDROID_AVD_HOME in my ~/.profile and it works nicely. – Percuss 22/7, 2017 at 21:25

1 - Move AVD to new Folder

2 - start Menu > Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings (on the left) > Environment Variables Add a new user variable: Variable name: ANDROID_AVD_HOME Variable value: a path to a directory of your choice

3 - Change the file .INI Set new folder.

4 - Open Android Studio

WORKS - Windows 2010

MORE INSTRUCTIONS : https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/variables

Maharaja answered 1/5, 2020 at 16:0 Comment(0)

Another way to specify ANDROID_SDK_HOME without messing around with environment variables (especially when using ec2) is simply create a shortcut of eclipse and add the following as target

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C "setx ANDROID_SDK_HOME YOUR AVD PATH /M & YOUR ECLIPSE.EXE PATH"

This will set ANDROID_SDK_HOME as system variable whenever you launch eclipse.

HTH Paul

Passifloraceous answered 14/4, 2011 at 20:19 Comment(0)

In my case, what I concerned about is the C: drive disk space. So what I did is copy the ".avd" folder(not file) to other drive, and leave the ".ini" file there but change it to point to the moved

Hallsy answered 28/11, 2012 at 2:7 Comment(1)

best efficient way.. – Joaniejoann 16/1, 2023 at 15:17

Please take note of the following : modifying android.bat in the Android tools directory, as suggested in a previous answer, may lead to problems.

If you do so, in order to legitimately have your .android directory located to a non-default location then there may be an inconsistency between the AVDs listed by Android Studio (using "Tools > Android > AVD Manager") and the AVDs listed by sdk command line tool "android avd".

I suppose that Android Studio, with its internal AVD Manager, does not use the android.bat modified path ; it relies on the ANDROID_SDK_HOME variable to locate AVDs.

My own tests have shown that Android tools correctly use the ANDROID_SDK_HOME variable.

Therefore, there is no point, as far as I know, in modifying android.bat, and using the environment variable should be preferred.

Mulligatawny answered 14/9, 2015 at 10:58 Comment(0)

there are major 4 steps 1. copy the .android folder to your desired location as i did in D:\Android\.android 2. set ANDROID_AVD_HOME in environment variables like ANDROID_AVD_HOME D:\Android\.android\avd 3. change avd name.ini file contents with new location like avd.ini.encoding=UTF-8 path=D:\Android\.android\avd\Pixel_2_API_29.avd path.rel=avd\Pixel_2_API_29.avd target=android-29 4. restart android studio

Residentiary answered 20/3, 2020 at 4:33 Comment(1)

Modifying the .ini file turned out to be an essential step for me. – Coryden 14/5, 2021 at 7:27

I think the easiest way is to move the avd folder from C:\Users[USER].android folder to your desired location then create a symbolic link to it in C:\Users[USER].android with the same name.

If you wonder how to do this, first install Link Shell Extension. After folder movement right click on it and select Pick Link Source then right click in .android folder and in Drop As... sub menu select Symbolic Link.

Bright answered 8/4, 2015 at 12:0 Comment(1)

this works and honestly it should be much higher. additionally, you can create a symbolic link for C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk\system-images, that place eats a lot of space as well. you don't need to use any third-party tools, mklink /D system-images D:\path\to\system-images works just fine – Regulation 25/2, 2018 at 5:13

I followed https://www.mysysadmintips.com/windows/clients/761-move-android-studio-avd-folder-to-a-new-location.

Start copying a folder "C:\Users\user\.android\avd" to "D:\Android\.android\avd" (or something else).
Close Android Studio and running emulators.
Press Win + Break and open Advanced System Settings. Then press Environment Variables. Add a user variable ANDROID_SDK_HOME. (I didn't experiment with ANDROID_AVD_HOME.) In Variable value field write D:\Android. If you also moved SDK to another folder, change ANDROID_HOME (I forgot to change it and some emulators didn't launch, see https://mcmap.net/q/111218/-android-9-emulator-does-not-start).
Wait until the folder will finish copying and start Android Studio.
Open Android Virtual Device Manager and see a list of emulators. If you don't see emulators and they existed, then probably you entered wrong path into user variable value in step 3. In this case close AS, change the variable and open AS again.
Start any emulator. It will try to restore it's state, but it sometimes fails. A black screen can appear instead of Android wallpaper.
In this case you can:

a. Restart your emulator. To do this close running emulator, then in AVD Manager click Cold Boot Now.

b. If this didn't help, open emulator settings, found in file "D:\Android\.android\avd\Pixel_API_27.ini".

Change a path to a new AVD folder. Restart the emulator.

Delete old AVD folder from "C:\Users\user\.android\avd".

Darondarooge answered 29/3, 2019 at 16:17 Comment(0)

For Windows 10 : ANDROID_SDK_HOME

this link helped me.

Then just moved all content of "avd" to the new location. Now you may need to change the value of "path=" in the configuration Setting file of each avds to the new location. You can see the old avds in avd manager in Android Studio and they work.

Trucking answered 24/8, 2021 at 4:28 Comment(0)

Variable name: ANDROID_SDK_HOME
Variable value: C:\Users>User Name

worked for me.

Jugular answered 22/1, 2013 at 10:13 Comment(0)

ANDROID_SDK_HOME also worked for me on Windows 8 x64 also find all location (in my case it was d:\.android) and delete it. You won't need it anymore.

Sinclare answered 24/4, 2013 at 21:20 Comment(0)

In AVD manager, after setting up AVD using a target with Google APIs, on run was getting error.

Detail showed: "AVD Unknown target 'Google Inc.:Google APIs:...... "

During install (on Win7 system) I had chosen a SDK directory location, instead of accepting C:\Users\... I'd then added that directory to environment variable 'path' Command line: android list targets did show a couple of Google apis.

Setting ANDROID_SDK_HOME to my install path fixed the avd run error.

Dayna answered 18/1, 2016 at 1:0 Comment(0)

MacOs Get a directory adv

./emulator -help-datadir

the default directory is:

/Users/{your_computer_user_name}/.android

and then Go to avd Folder edit .ini file with path to your custom emulator directory example :

path=/Volumes/Macintos/_emulatorandroid/avd/Nexus_5X_API_27.avd path.rel=avd/Nexus_5X_API_27.avd target=android-27

and then save. Now your Emulator haschange

And Result:

Charla answered 21/3, 2019 at 4:59 Comment(0)

According to https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/variables.html, ANDROID_AVD_HOME is correct.

However, for some unknown reason, it's not working after setting the environment variable at either user or system level. I tried with java code System.getenv('ANDROID_AVD_HOME'), the new environment variable was not being read by java.

A workaround is to modify studio64.exe.vmoptions (or studio.exe.vmoptions) and add -DANDROID_AVD_HOME=D:\ANDROID\avd.

Lunular answered 7/2 at 9:55 Comment(0)

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