Today we’re excited to announce the availability of Marshmallow images in the Visual Studio Emulator for Android. Marshmallow (Android version 6.0, API Level 23) is the latest release of Android, and includes a set of new APIs for developers to use. If you’ve developed an app for other versions of Android, you’ll want to make sure your app runs well against this latest release, and we’ve provided a range of Device Profiles to make sure you can test against the top devices that support or will soon support API 23.

Getting started with Marshmallow

If you don’t have the emulator installed, you can install the latest version (including Marshmallow support) here. If you already have the emulator installed, you’ll need to do a quick update. When you open the Emulator Manager by going to the “Visual Studio Emulator for Android” entry in the Start Menu, you will see a notification that an update is available. Click “Download” to install the update.

Once the update is installed, you’ll see a new entry in the API Level dropdown—Marshmallow (API Level 23).

Selecting this entry will filter the list to show only Marshmallow device profiles. To install a Marshmallow device profile, simply click the “Install profile” button.

Note that the first time you install a new API level you will need to be connected to the internet. Once the profile is installed, simply hit the “Play” button and you’re ready to get going. The simulations and features available in earlier versions of the emulator (accelerometer, location, camera, network, etc.) are all hooked up and running with Marshmallow too.

Wrap up

Thanks to everyone who has given us feedback and helped us to prioritize bringing new versions of Android to the emulator quickly—keep it coming by commenting below, submitting items to our UserVoice page, using the Send-a-Smile tool in Visual Studio or in the Emulator Manager, or asking for help on StackOverflow using the android-emulator and visual-studio tags (you can also check our troubleshooting document for common problems)!