Why is genymotion running so slowly?

Question

I am trying to use genymotion for android development because the stock android emulator is painfully slow. Everyone has been commenting on how fast it is and I cannot seem to get it working at all. I have virtualisation enabled in the bios and I double checked that with intel processor identification utility and it has confirmed this. I upgraded the processor and this hasn't helped. I currently have an intel core 2 quad cpu Q9400 clocked at 2.66GHz which should be plenty fast enough, it copes with everything else fine and I recently upgraded it to this (it is the fastest processor that has the same socket on the motherboard). What is the limiting factor here that is making genymotion take over 10 minutes to boot up? It is using the intel Q45 integrated graphics. Is this the problem? I would upgrade the graphics if this was the case I just wanted to make sure before investing that money and realising that genymotion is still really slow. Thanks

Answer 1

The FAQ at https://www.genymotion.com/help/desktop/faq/ states

Several versions of VirtualBox are known to cause issues in Genymotion. For Genymotion to run properly, make sure you have the right version of VirtualBox installed:

Mac OS X: 5.0.26 (a sound issue prevents version 5.0.28 to run properly) Windows: 5.0.28 Linux: 5.0.28 In any case, do not use versions 5.1.x, as they are known to cause sound issues and in some cases prevent Genymotion to start.

My issue was running VirtualBox 5.1.x - I installed the recommended version and all was well again

Answer 2

I am using Genymotion on windows 10 to debug react native applications.

It didn't take 10 minutes to start, as described in the question, but everything was slow: took few seconds to refresh when I updated my code (and it was set to 'live reload'), took few seconds to respond to a click in an input field, etc.

Looking at the basic performance view of the task manager, the only parameter that looked problematic (close to 100%) was memory.

The emulator was defined with 4 GB memory (and 4 CPUs). I am using version 3.0.2 of genmyotion with virtual box 6.0.4.

I tried many things, and the only thing that helped was, unsurprisingly, increasing memory in my PC from 8 GB to 16 GB (it is a Dell Inspiron 3576 with i7-8550U CPU @ 1.80GHz[Cores 4]). With 16GB of memory I don't experience any performance issues (at lesat until the next Windows update :)

Answer 3

From the FAQ:

Genymotion is based on virtualization. Make sure your CPU virtualization technology feature (Intel VT-x or AMD-V) is enabled in your computer motherboard BIOS.

Another option might be to increase the RAM allotted to your Genymotion device. You can click the "wrench" icon next to your virtual device in the list, and try doubling the RAM (e.g. 2048 => 4096). You can play around with it to find a value that works best for you and your computer.

Answer 4

Make sure that you have the latest Virtualbox and Virtualbox Extension Pack installed. If its still slow consider reinstalling it to another hard drive since the Read/Write Operations seems to be very slow if booting takes that long.

Answer 5

Another option that helps to speed it up is disabling animations in developer settings on virtual android device. Go to developer settings and look for animations settings and switch them all to off. Also check that you have at last 4GB of ram set for device. Also newer versions of android run slower but if you have so slow startup times as 10 minutes for genymotion, maybe its just that your system is out of resources because of some misbehaving application in the background.