Small font size in Android emulator

Question

Sometimes I notice the Android emulator starts with a very small font size. This seems to happen randomly. Other times it has a normal font size. I use ADT 10.0.1. Do you know what is the problem?

Warthog

This also happened to me when I tried to scale emulator to get the same physical size as my phone screen. The reboot of emulator helped to fix it as well. It never happens if I do not use scaling feature of emulator. – Fieldsman

@Fieldsman But I never use the scaling feature and it happens nevertheless. – Warthog

Also, I don't know how it's related, but when the fonts are small, the internet connection doesn't work... – Warthog

It's too bad there are no answers to this question. I am using SDK 2.2 (8) and I see this fairly often. It tends to be computer-specific but is also unpredictable. My guess is that it switches density since widget and icon sizes change too – Orrin

Answer 1

This happens very often, and although I'm not sure about the exact reason behind this, it seems that somehow the wrong density was detected for this and resources for a lower dpi is loaded inside a higher dpi emulator. That's why everything is smaller, but the layout works properly and aligns things at their own places. And you're right: when this happens, network doesn't work in emulator! These two things seem unrelated, but my guess is that emulator fails at loading config for the current virtual machine successfully, and that includes density and network capabilities.

Anyways, there doesn't seem to be any official info on this, and similar reports in android-developers mailing list didn't get any response for developers of Android, although this is a very popular bug.

And the solution right now is only restarting the emulator. Sometimes you have to do this more than once, but finally it works.

Suzerainty

Answer 2

Make sure your computer's display resolution can satisfy your emulator's exact resolution. If you are using Mac with Retina Display, this problem may occur. Try changing display resolution via Display settings.

Punnet

Answer 3

When I disconnect a display or log in to the PC through RDP, the resolution of the emulated device changes. The text and icons are extremely small. Sometimes just restarting the emulated was enough, now I have to go to settings in Android Studio -> Device Manager (AVD) and double the current resolution.

Stonework