How to Install Android L SDK and Try Android L Preview on Windows and Mac
Google has unveiled the next major iteration of Android at Google I/O 2014 called “Android L”. We were hoping to see a new Nexus hardware alongside this announcement which will come pre-installed with Android L but that is not the case. Rather Google has only shown a preview targeted towards developers rather than the final build. The good part is, Google recently made the Android L Preview SDK live for anyone to use. This means you can try and test out the new Android L straight from your computer. Developers have already started experimenting with the new SDK and are eager to develop some great apps.
Keep in mind this is a developer preview rather than the real deal which means, the experience you see here might change in the final product but not drastically. Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 (2013) users are enjoying this preview straight from their devices however, if you don’t have them then you can easily checkout Android L via your Windows PC or Mac. Want to know how? Read below!
Do note, this is just an emulator for the computer so that you can test out the new Android features. If you want the full experience, a device running Android L would be much better asemulator tends to leave out much of the hardware features. Let’s continue with a step-by-step guide on how to set up and install the Android L SDK on your computer.
NOTE: The tutorial below is along the lines of how you could download and install the Android 4.1 SDK when it came out last year. Screenshots may be slightly different. Please read every line carefully below.
How to Set Up and Install Android L SDK Emulator
Step 1 - Download the Android SDK installer from:http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html. We’re going to use the Windows version here.
Step 2 - Install the Android SDK files you just downloaded to any location.
Step 3 - Now, go the installed location and run the “SDK Manager” application.
NOTE: If you have downloaded the Zipped version of SDK, go to the location where youextracted the zip archive.
Step 4 - Wait for the application to load and fetch all the Android SDK packages.
Step 5 - Once completed, now select the packages you want to install. Here, we will be only selecting the “Android L Preview (API 20)” and “Android SDK Platform-tools” (under Tools). You can leave the “Extras“. This should be enough.
NOTE: If you want to use hardware acceleration on Intel x86 Emulator image then download Intel HAXM x86 from Extras menu.
Step 6 - Click on “Install packages…”. You will be prompted to confirm the packages you chose to install and you would have to agree to the Licence information to proceed.
Note: If you’re going through all this just for the Android Emulator, then only select “SDK Platform” and “ARM EABI v7a System Image” and install them. You don’t really need the rest!
Next, let’s set up the Android emulator to actually run Android 4.4.2 on your computer. The next part continues on Page 2.
Set Up Android Emulator for Android L
Once everything is installed, now lets set up the Android Emulator so that you can play with Android L on your computer.
Step 8 - Go back to the Android SDK folder and run “AVD Manager”. Now click on New and create a virtual device with details as in the screenshot below.
NOTE: Use default value for “Max VM application heap”. As Android supports a variety of displays, you can explore and experiment with different devices by selecting options in theDevice: dropdown.
NOTE 1: You can tick “Use Host GPU” for better loading times and also to solve black screen problem. If you are starting your Virtual Device for the first time, start with RAM less than512MB.
Step 9 - Click OK on the result window.
