How to create a virtual Android device

In addition to running individual Android apps, Anbox Cloud allows you to stream the whole Android experience. The following sections describe how to set up such a virtual Android device experience.

Set up an application for the virtual device

To create a virtual device, you must first set up a basic application. This application will not contain an APK and will therefore start directly into the Android system launcher and provide the full Android experience.

A very simple application manifest for such an application looks like this:

name: vdev
resources:
  cpus: 2
  memory: 3GB
  disk-size: 3GB

If you want to use a GPU for instances created for your new vdev application, include gpu-slots as a resource requirement in the application manifest.

name: vdev-gpu
resources:
  cpus: 2
  memory: 3GB
  disk-size: 5GB
  gpu-slots: 3

(Optional) extend the application

If you want to install additional applications that you want to offer as part of the default virtual device, you can extend the application with Hooks. For example, you could replace the standard Android launcher with a custom one or change the system locale.

See How to extend an application for instructions on extending your application.

Create the application

Once the configuration is in place, create the application in AMS:

amc application create vdev

After creating the application, you can stream it through the UI of the Anbox Stream Gateway (see Getting started with Anbox Cloud (web dashboard)) or your own custom client application built with the Streaming SDK (see Anbox Cloud Streaming SDK).