How can I launch Android Emulator without android studio on Mac M1

Question

I'm trying to start the emulator with this command emulator -avd Pixel_4_API_30 but it gives me an error:

[8633370112]:ERROR:android/android-emu/android/qt/qt_setup.cpp:28:Qt library not found at ../emulator/lib64/qt/lib
Could not launch '/Users/primulax/../emulator/qemu/darwin-x86_64/qemu-system-aarch64': No such file or directory

Android Studio specs:

Build #AI-203.7717.56.2031.7935034, built on November 21, 2021
Runtime version: 11.0.10+0-b96-7249189 aarch64
VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM by JetBrains s.r.o.
macOS 12.2
GC: G1 Young Generation, G1 Old Generation
Memory: 2048M
Cores: 8
Registry: external.system.auto.import.disabled=true
Non-Bundled Plugins: org.jetbrains.kotlin

✅ I was able to run with ~/Library/Android/sdk/emulator/emulator -avd Pixel_4_API_30 with this command

Answer 1

Use ~/Library/Android/sdk/emulator/emulator instead of ~/Library/Android/sdk/tools/emulator on MacOS, for Ubuntu use ~/Android/Sdk/emulator/emulator.

Answer 2

I just experienced the same issue on a freshly setup machine, emulator installed through SDK manager and all.

The error message says it all actually: If you go to /Users/primulax/../emulator/qemu/ on your machine, you'll notice that of course there is no darwin-x86_64 directory, but darwin_aarch64, since you are on an M1 machine. Whatever the reason is the emulator looks in the wrong directory, if you just duplicate the darwin_aarch64 folder and name your copy darwin-x86_64, it works as intended. Not ideal, but it's a workaround until this path-problem is fixed.

Edit: Please take a look at @Andrew Stromme's comment. Of course symlinking is a much more elegant solution to this problem!