Problem with Android emulator no longer starting on mac os high sierrra 10.13.6

Question

I have a late 2011 Mac with a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512 MB and 12 GB of ram.I've had no problems with starting the android emulator from Android Studio in the past. However, updating to Android Studio 4.1.1 the emulator no longer launches. It looks like it's going to launch however it crashes and I get an error report that looks like this: Android Emulator Error

I have no clue what to do. I've uninstalled and reinstalled intel haxm, started and stopped it, tried to launch the android emulator with the terminal, uninstall and reinstall the emulator, wiped my hard drive and reinstall mac os high sierra (latest version for my computer) and still nothing. Is it just not compatible with my computer anymore?

Answer 1

Android emulator 29.0.6 (May 1, 2019) is probably the start of problems...

https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/emulator#29.0.6-vulkan-macos

macOS support is still experimental, but the emulator already includes the Swiftshader, MoltenVK, and libportability (gfx-rs) APIs.

It's not easy to install old versions of the emulator, but I can run the current emulator (30.0.26) on my MacBook Pro "Early 2011" if I request either swiftshader or libportability. If I request moltenvk, it crashes (same crash if I don't select one - looks like the crash you posted).

# crash
emulator -avd AVD
ANDROID_EMU_VK_ICD=moltenvk emulator -avd AVD

# works
ANDROID_EMU_VK_ICD=swiftshader emulator -avd AVD
ANDROID_EMU_VK_ICD=portability emulator -avd AVD

It looks like swiftshader is entirely CPU-based while libportability may be able to take advantage of 3D hardware?

MoltenVK requires Metal, which I do not have (why I can't upgrade to 10.14). It seems your system also lacks Metal.