Android Emulator Tips and Tricks [closed]

Question

What is your Emulator feature that you could not work without?

Which unknown great shortcut, console command or startup option is there that you discovered and you think has to be also known by all other Android devs?

Share your Emulator wisdom with us.

Answer 1

Not exactly an emulator feature but related.

When using Eclipse for Android development, the debug certificate that is automatically created only lasts 1 year. When it expires, it's a pain to have to delete all your development .apk files, because the new certificate doesn't match so you can't upgrade them in all your AVDs. You have to get another development MAP-API key as well. The published recommendation is to simply delete the debug.keystore file and Eclipse (ADT really) will create a new one for you, again with a 1 year expiration. But you can create your own debug certificate in debug.keystore with whatever expiration you want. Do this in the .android folder under your HOME directory:

keytool -genkey -v -keystore debug.keystore -alias androiddebugkey -storepass android -keypass android -keyalg RSA -validity 14000

ADT sets the first and last name on the certificate as "Android Debug", the organizational unit as "Android" and the two-letter country code as "US". You can leave the organization, city, and state values as "Unknown".

Answer 2

You can enable/disable the Emulator Network with: F8

Great for testing service interruptions while your app is connected to some web based service. It allows very fast disabling just at the moment a download or a webservice started.