Using Genymotion with Ionic (Cordova, PhoneGap)

Just a quick tutorial here.  I have been using this great Ionic Framework for creating hybrid apps with AngularJS.

Genymotion is a piece of great software for Android developers. It has one of the fastest emulators out there, and now that I know about it, I can’t even imagine developing Android apps without using it. One of the things that make it stand out is that it uses Virtual Box under the hood.

Ionic has a command line for running the app on the emulator, iOS or Android. Just call ionic emulate android and it will fire up an emulator and install the app. Unfortunately, it couldn’t find the Genymotion emulator! Whhhhyyyyy?!

The issue is that it’s not Ionic or Cordova, the real thing that is called behind the scenes.  It’s because Genymotion doesn’t tell android-adb that it is an emulator. It tells that it is a device.  After realizing this – it makes sense.

We need to run as a “real device”. To do that we need to run:

ionic run android

Now it will find the Genymotion Virtual Android and everything will work.

Enjoy!