Android Studio emulator extremely slow

Question

I have Android Studio updated at latest release (today is April 22nd, 2017) and Haxm installed, but the Android emulator is completely useless. It is extremely slow.

I don't know why, a few days ago it was running fast and smooth. Then I restarted my computer and it became extremely slow. It must be some reason for this.

Please, do not answer to install Genymotion. Genymotion doesn't allow me to emulate the phone in the free version.

As I said, intel haxm is installed.

The message "Process system isn't responding" is displaying all the time.

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UPDATE April 25th, 2017: My Android Studio installed a new update (I cannot specify what got updated) and now the emulator suddenly runs fast again (the same AVDs, I haven't created new ones) But this same behavior has happened before. I am sure that in a few days/weeks it will suddenly run extremely slow again, and it will be this way for a few days/weeks, after another update will run smooth again. This has been happening for me during months. I will post here when that happens.

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UPDATE April 30th, 2017: My Android Studio installed a new update (Google Repository) and now the emulator suddenly is going extremely slow (the same AVDs, I haven't created new ones). I am sure that in a few days/weeks it will suddenly run fast again.

Answer 1

In my case the problem was (and still is) the emulated graphics settings (see AVD / Virtual Device Configuration), probably indicating a problem with video card and/or video driver. I had very random speed using Automatic or Hardware - GLES 2.0 - sometimes it's silky smooth, sometimes it's unacceptable. (On a side note: I find these issues only on Android 6.0+ emulator, for example Android 4.1 is always very fast).

After switching to Software - GLES 2.0 performance is now acceptable: not very fast, but usable, and also the color gradients are not as nice (it's software rendering after all). I hope it works for you too.

Answer 2

Finally I've found a solution (at least to me). I've followed this steps (I don't know if all of them are necessary): 1) Manually updated HAXM to last version from Intel website 2) As my laptop has 2 integrated GPU's (Intel and Nvidia, where Intel is the default and weaker one), in Nvidia GeForce control panel, I've forced both emulator.exe and qemu-system-i386.exe to use Nvidia card instead Intel. 3) I've created new AVD's with x86 image and setup the GPU to use "Hardware - GLES 2.0" profile.

Now the emulator is incredibly fast. It seems better than never.

Answer 3

I've used the solution of Márcio Oliveira, but in only one step: on my laptop with 2 integrated GPUs from Nvidia Control Panel -> Managed 3D Settings I forced the qemu-system-i386 application (located in \AppData\Local\Android\sdk\emulator\qemu\windows-x86_64) to run on the Nvidia processor, this resolved my problem.