{"id":35114,"date":"2018-02-01T15:22:55","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T23:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.xamarin.com\/?p=35114"},"modified":"2019-04-04T08:49:13","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T15:49:13","slug":"just-push-play-using-google-play-android-emulator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/just-push-play-using-google-play-android-emulator\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Push Play: Using Google Play on an Android Emulator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tThe needs of an Android developer using the Android emulator continuously expand. The latest emulator development from Google provides a system image for the Google Play Store, which includes a fully working Google Play Store application that you can use to manage applications through your Google account.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s one small catch, however, this system image includes some restrictions, such as <strong>not including root access<\/strong>. With that said, this system image acts more like a device you might pick up from your local wireless carrier.<\/p>\n<h2>Getting Started with Google Play<\/h2>\n<p>In newer versions of Android (Android 7.0 (Nougat) and above), you can find <code>Google Play System Images<\/code>\u00a0to download within the <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.xamarin.com\/guides\/android\/getting_started\/installation\/android-sdk\/\">Xamarin Android SDK Manager<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-35115 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2019\/03\/2018-01-31_14-57-59.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"702\" height=\"582\" \/><\/p>\n<p>You can then use the <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.xamarin.com\/guides\/android\/getting_started\/installation\/android-emulator\/xamarin-device-manager\/\">Xamarin Android Device Manager<\/a> to create a new device using the Google Play System Image.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-35116 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2019\/03\/2018-01-31_13-19-14.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"786\" height=\"573\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Note<\/strong>: Ensure that the <code>tag.id<\/code> is set to <code>google_apis_playstore<\/code> and that your <code>Device<\/code> is set to <code>Nexus 5X<\/code> or <code>Nexus 5<\/code>, since the Google Play System Images work best with these device skins. Using a different skin may not be compatible at the time of this writing.<\/p>\n<p>When you start the emulator, you&#8217;ll notice there&#8217;s a Google Play Store application pre-installed on the device:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-35117 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2019\/03\/2018-01-31_13-59-08.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"461\" height=\"852\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>Wrapping Up<\/h2>\n<p>Use the Play Store to install and manage any other applications you need to assist your Android development. Here are a few of our favorites to get you started:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.actinarium.materialcue\">Material Cue<\/a>: Draw grids and keylines over the device screen to help implement patterns, such as Material Design.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=de.toastcode.screener\">Screener<\/a>: Take screenshots and place into device frames, which you can add backgrounds and effects to for your Google Play listing.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.rafalzajfert.displaymetrics\">Display Metrics<\/a>: Useful for quickly checking which Android resources \u201cbucket\u201d a test device falls into (hdpi, xhdpi, xxhdpi etc).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For a full list of apps that can assist with your Android Development, search the <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/andyb129\/AndroidAppyDeveloperTools\">Android App Developer Tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/forums.xamarin.com\/120472\/just-push-play-using-google-play-on-an-android-emulator\">Discuss this post in the forums!<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The needs of an Android developer using the Android emulator continuously expand. The latest emulator development from Google provides a system image for the Google Play Store, which includes a fully working Google Play Store application that you can use to manage applications through your Google account. There&#8217;s one small catch, however, this system image [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":551,"featured_media":39167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-35114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-developers","tag-android"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>The needs of an Android developer using the Android emulator continuously expand. The latest emulator development from Google provides a system image for the Google Play Store, which includes a fully working Google Play Store application that you can use to manage applications through your Google account. There&#8217;s one small catch, however, this system image [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/551"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}