Create, start, and manage Android emulators without opening Android Studio. emu works as a shorthand for emulator.
emulator create
Create or update an Android emulator. Run it without arguments for interactive prompts:
emulator delete
Delete one or more Android emulators:
emulator images
Manage Android system images with the install, list, and delete subcommands:
emulator list
List installed Android emulators:
emulator start
Start an Android emulator. Run it without a name to pick one interactively:
emulator status
Show the status of an Android emulator by name or serial:
emulator stop
Stop a running Android emulator by name or serial:
emulator tune
Apply the agent-friendly tweaks to a running Android emulator, by name or serial:
Tuning is opt-in: emulator start and emulator create --start only apply the tweaks when you pass --tune, which is non-interactive and applies all of them. Running tune on its own asks which tweaks to apply, with every one pre-selected so Enter applies the lot; -y skips that question.
Name the emulator in a script. Unlike device tune, emulator tune has no single-candidate
shortcut: with no name or serial it opens an emulator picker whenever any
emulator is running, one or many, and -y does not suppress it — that flag
skips the tweak question only. With no emulator running it prints a hint and
exits without tuning. device tune for those, which does fall back to the only connected device and takes --device or --all.
Last modified on September 4, 2026
