Is there an alternative Android emulator for Visual Studio on Windows 10 Home

Question

When using Visual Studio 2015 to develop c++ for Android the emulator only works if you are running a Pro version of Windows, for those using Visual Studio Community who are probably also running on a Home version of windows (like me) the Emulator will not work.

Is there an alternative available that can integrate with the VS debugger?

*** Edit I have been looking at this list Android emulators although this seems to be aimed at android gaming on PC rather than App development. So was wondering if anyone had managed to integrate one of these with Visual Studio?

Answer 1

Both the below options come with the caveat that I have not used either.

Xamarin Android Player

Apparently Xamarin had issues with the default Android Emulator. Primarily that it was slow, and clunky, and they were getting a lot of complaints about it from Xamarin users (despite it not being their product/fault).

They decided to create their own emulator to get around this, and it can be found here.

It should be noted that (at time of writing) this is still in Preview by the looks of things. So bugs may be present.

From what I can see on the download page, it doesn't appear like you need Xamarin to actually use it. In any case, it's worth a shot.

GenyMotion

Another option is GenyMotion. There is a free version for personal use only (with limited functionality), or a paid option that provides more capability.