Creating a new AVD instance

From the Your Virtual Devices of the AVD Manager, click on Create Virtual Device (you can do the same as you run your app from within Android Studio by clicking on the Run icon, and then, in the Select Deployment Target dialog, choose Create New Emulator). Please refer to the following screenshot:

Select a hardware profile and then click on Next, as shown in the previous screenshot.

If you notice the Download link next to the system image, you have to click on it. The download process starts, as you can see in the following screenshot:

We must note that the API level of the target device is very important! Your application can't run on a system image whose API level is less than the one required by your application. That attribute is specified in your Gradle configuration. We will deal with Gradle in detail later.

Finally, Verify Configuration appears:

Change the AVD properties if needed and then click on Finish to complete the wizard. The newly created AVD appears in the Your Virtual Devices list or the Select Deployment Target dialog, depending on where you accessed the wizard from.

If you need to create a copy of the existing AVD, follow these instructions:

1. Open AVD Manager, right-click on the AVD instance, and select Duplicate.
2. Follow the wizard, and, after you modified what you needed, click on Finish.
3. A new modified version appears in our AVD list.

We will demonstrate dealing with hardware profiles by creating a new one from scratch. To create a new hardware profile, follow these instructions. In Select Hardware, click on New Hardware Profile. Please refer to the following screenshot:

Configure Hardware Profile appears. Adjust the hardware profile properties as needed. Click on Finish. Your newly created hardware profile appears.