running-tests-on-gradle-managed-devices

What problem does it solve?

Gradle Managed Devices lets you run instrumented Android tests on a reproducible emulator environment without manually creating, starting, and maintaining AVDs for CI.

Core Features & Use Cases

• Version-controlled emulator provisioning: Define devices with the android.testOptions.managedDevices { localDevices { create(...) } } DSL so every run uses the same device configuration.
• Reliable CI execution: Run generated tasks like <deviceName>DebugAndroidTest, <groupName>GroupDebugAndroidTest, and allDevicesCheck, while Gradle handles download, boot, test execution, and teardown.
• Cheaper CI with ATD images and sharding: Use Automated Test Device (ATD) images (aosp-atd, google-atd) for headless, faster boots and shard slow suites across managed-device copies for parallelism.

Quick Start

Ask your AI coding agent to set up Gradle Managed Devices in build.gradle.kts with an ATD-based managed device and then run the generated <deviceName>DebugAndroidTest task so CI automatically provisions, boots, tests, and tears down the emulator.