We will be using Android Studio to help us create the Android Virtual Device also know as AVD or Android Emulator.
This will allow us to test our mobile application that we are going to develop.
Why are you using Android Studio if we are going to use Visual Studio with Xamarin for Mobile Development?
Indeed, Visual Studio can and does allow you to create the Android Emulator for testing but I find that Android Studio does a much better job at creating and running the emulator. Emulators created by Android Studio seem to run faster and have fewer issues.
So to do this, just launch your favorite browser, then search for Android Studio.
Download and install it.
Note that this guide is for installation on a Windows 10 machine with an Intel CPU machine. If you have an AMD chip machine, please contact me. I have additional instructions to give you.
Once Android Studio is installed, run it.
On the top File menu, Go to Tools > AVD Manager
This window shows you a list of your AVD that you can run.
We will be creating a new Virtual Device by clicking the button at the bottom left (+ Create Virtual Device ...)
Here you can custom define your hardware device or clone an existing profile such as the Pixel 3 XL.
Since I have this I am going to choose this device profile (Pixel 3 XL)
Next, we need to choose an API. As you can see, API 30 is the latest API. Since I don't have it downloaded yet, I am going to download it.
After API 30 image has been downloaded and install, I am going to select and click Next.
I am going to leave the name as default (Pixel 3 XL API 30) because it is descriptive enough.
Then launch the emulator and leave it running.
Go open Visual Studio and your cross-platform projects. I will show you how to do this in later videos.
In the solution, set the Android project as the Startup project. You will see the Pixel_3_XL_API_30 appear automatically in the list.
Simply run the Android project to deploy to that device.