Getting there is a bit messy, but it works. I won't bury the lede: It does run Intel apps. I put it to the test on my M1 MacBook Air. Would it run classic Intel-based Windows apps, or would it just be a version of Windows devoid of most of Windows enormous library of Intel-based software? This week, I got my hands on Parallels Desktop 17.
Even then, expectations were low because, as ZDNet reported, Microsoft's license doesn't support running Windows for Arm on Macs. Expectations, however, were that the M1 Parallels implementation might run Windows for Arm but not Intel Windows applications.
When the M1 Macs came out, Parallels announced it could port their virtualization software to Apple Silicon. I found the ability to switch between Windows Excel and PowerPoint (which still, to this day, have some features not found on the Mac) and my Mac-based graphics and video applications to be a huge win. I've been running various versions of the Parallels virtualization solution on my Intel Macs since I repurchased my 2013 iMac in the day. There is a crazy amount of configurations out there of Windows PCs and I am sure they would be interested to know if you are experiencing super slow emulators after everything is enabled so let them know on the Visual Studio Developer Community.Apple's Mac lineup can be confusing as the company transitions from Intel processors to its own Apple Silicon processors. I will say that YMMV on these Android emulators as this is the first release with support for Windows Hypervisor Platform.
Then just turn on Hyper-V and the Windows Hypervisor Platform (if you don't see this and are on October's update don't worry it is now bundled into Hyper-V itself).Īfter a quick reboot, Hyper-V is ready to roll on your machine and the emulators should boot up pretty quick.
Here is me running an Android emulator on my Surface Book 2 with the new Hypervisor Platform: Power Up Your Android EmulatorĬheckout the full documentation to learn the small details on setup, but in general it is as simple as upgrading your Android SDK and Emulator in the Android SDK Manager:
This means that for the first time if you have an AMD Processor, have Hyper-V on, or wanted to do Docker work you can run Android emulators pretty fast. The mobile developer tools team (aka Xamarin team) worked with the Hyper-V team to extend Hyper-V for the first time to be able to run Google's official Android x86 emulator images natively on Hyper-V instead of on Intel's HAXM. In the Windows 2018 April Update (build 1803) something magical happened. The Solution: Windows Hypervisor Platform If you are like me and develop every day on a Windows machine then you know that HAXM is great, but only if you have the ideal setup:Įven installing HAXM is very tricky and requires reboots and toggles sometimes in the BIOS, which is never fun. This actually works amazing on macOS as every device essentially has an Intel chip and doesn't have conflicts with a core virtualization engine (hypervisor). Intel nearly saved the day with HAXM that runs Android x86 emulator images on Intel VT. Google has done a lot of work in the last few years to improve the Android emulators with Quick Boot, more customization and hardware support, but being able to run them fast has still been a pain point. From there a bunch of companies attempted to fix the problem by using custom built solutions on top of Virtual Box or Hyper-V. From the very start we had just ARM emulators that were a complete joke to work with as they moved at a snail's pace.
I have been a mobile developer for 7 years now and since the day I started one of my largest complaints has been the Android emulator.