How to update Google Play Services on the emulator in Android Studio

Question

Hi I am trying to run an Android Program I have created that can connect to Firebase with Authentication using email and password but it seems that I cannot even authenticate due to the fact of them saying my Google Play Service is not up to date.

I am stump here as I have the latest google play services according to my SDK manager

and I don't think it is my code's problem as when I use my friend's phone for debugging it works but not when I am using the emulator.

How can I update my google play services in the Android Studio built-in emulator.

Answer 1

Since Google introduced Google Play Store images in Android SDK Tools 26.0.0 now emulators comes with installed Google Play Store.

When creating Emulator use images that support Google Playstore (currently Nexus 5 and Nexus 5x with android O)

From 26.0.3

• Adds a new tab in the extended window for Google Play Store images that displays the Play Services version and a button to check for updates to Play Services.

Edit: Make sure that you use emulator with playstore is installed. Check if you have sdk manager -> sdk platforms -> Android 8 -> Google Play ... system image installed. Download it. Create new emulator using that image.

Answer 2

I had the same issue and spent half a day working it out.

In your emulator, go to settings->apps->Google Play Services and compare the version used to what appears in your build.gradle file.

In my case the emulator was running an earlier version and no amount of updates seemed to change it.

In build.gradle, I changed the following:

compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services:9.6.1' 

to

compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services:8.+'

After which I restarted android-studio and it worked flawlessly.