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Get Started with Genymotion Desktop

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Genymotion Desktop is a local Android emulator for PC and Mac.

Requirements

Genymotion Desktop should work on most modern computers, provided they meet the following minimum requirements.

Hardware

Component Requirement
CPU PC: 64-bit Intel 6th generation or AMD Ryzen
Mac: 64-bit Intel or Apple silicon SoC (Mac M)
BIOS/UEFI PC: Intel VT-x or AMD-V/SMV capability must be enabled in the Bios/UEFI
Graphics OpenGL 3.3 or higher capable video card*
RAM Memory 16GB or more
Display resolution 1920x1080 or higher
Free HD space 300MB for Genymotion + 2GB minimum per virtual devices

*There are compatibility issues with some Intel integrated GPUs on Windows. Learn more.

Rosetta must be enabled on Mac M series.

Operating Systems

Warning

  • Virtual environments such as Virtual Machines, VPS or Docker are not supported. Learn more
  • Servers are not supported. Learn more

The following OSes are supported:

  • Windows (x86_64 only)

    Supported versions:

    • Windows 10
    • Windows 11

    Installation guide

  • macOS

    Supported versions:

    • macOS 14 Sequoia
    • macOS 15 Sonoma
    • macOS 26 Tahoe

    Installation guide

  • Linux (x86_64 only)

    Supported distributions:

    • Ubuntu 24.04LTS (Noble Numbar)
    • Debian 13 (Trixie)
    • Fedora Workstation 43

    Installation guide

Windows Installation Guide

Windows Servers, Virtual Machines, VPS (Virtual Private Servers) and Docker are NOT supported!

There are compatibility issues with some Intel integrated GPUs (iGPU) on Windows systems. Learn more

Windows Pro or Enterprise editions are highly recommended.

Genymotion Desktop for Windows arm64 is not available at this time, but it will be in the future.

Genymotion Desktop requires an hypervisor to run the Android system.

You can choose between VirtualBox (recommended) and QEMU:

VirtualBox needs to be installed alongside Genymotion Desktop, but to make things easier, it is included with our full installer for Windows from our website .

Hyper-V incompatibility

Genymotion does not work well with VirtualBox hypervisor when Hyper-V is enabled: you will probably get "The VirtualBox DHCP server has not assigned an IP address to the virtual device" errors or very poor performance. To fix this, you will need to completely disable Hyper-V when using Genymotion.

You can find detailed instructions in our FAQ: How to completely disable Hyper-V?.

If you choose to only install Genymotion, but still wish to use VirtualBox hypervisor, you must install it separately before running Genymotion. Learn more

QEMU hypervisor on Windows is still experimental and not recommended for the moment.

If you choose QEMU hypervisor, there is nothing to install but you need to make sure that Hyper-V is enabled:

  1. Search for "Turn Windows Features on or off" using Windows Search or Cortana and pick same from search results.

  2. In the Turn Windows Features on or off window, verify that all the Hyper-V options - Hyper-V Management Tools and Hyper-V Platform - are enabled. If not, check them all and click OK to apply the changes:

    Hyper-V

  3. Reboot your PC when prompted.

QEMU requires Hyper-V, but it is not available with Windows Home edition by default. We recommend using VirtualBox hypervisor with this version.

However, if you still wish to use QEMU, you will need to install Hyper-V manually. You can refer to this article for more details.

Make sure to backup your Windows system before installing Hyper-V manually!

To install Genymotion Desktop on Windows, follow these steps:

  1. Run Genymotion installer for Windows: genymotion-X.Y.Z-vbox.exe (or genymotion-X.Y.Z.exe if you wish to upgrade or install Genymotion without VirtualBox).
  2. Select the setup language and click OK. By default, the Genymotion language corresponds to your system language. The Genymotion setup wizard opens. Click Next.
  3. Select the destination folder by clicking Browse. The default destination folder is C:\Program Files\Genymobile\Genymotion. Then click Next.
  4. Select the start menu folder by clicking Browse or check Don't create a Start menu folder and click Next.
  5. Select whether or not to create a desktop icon and click Next.
  6. Click Install.
  7. Select Restart now and click Finish to reboot your PC.

macOS Installation Guide

Rosetta must be enabled on mac M series. Learn more

Genymotion Desktop requires an hypervisor to run the Android system.

Genymotion Desktop works as-is with an embedded QEMU hypervisor which uses Hypervisor, there is no need to install any extra software.

Using VirtualBox hypervisor on macOS is not recommended, and only available on old mac with Intel x86_64 CPU.

VirtualBox is not included in our DMG package and needs to be installed prior to Genymotion Desktop:

  1. Download VirtualBox DMG package for macOS (Intel only). Learn more
  2. Install VirtualBox.

  3. Go to macOS System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General, and click the Allow button:

    macOS install

If you get an error when launching Genymotion Desktop, reboot your Mac.

To install Genymotion Desktop on macOS, follow these steps:

  1. Open the genymotion-X.Y.Z.dmg package.
  2. Drag and drop Genymotion and Genymotion Shell to the Applications directory.

Linux Installation Guide

Due to the high number and variety of Linux distributions, it is impossible for us to test Genymotion Desktop on each and every one of them. For this reason, only the following distributions are officially supported:

  • Ubuntu 24.04LTS (Noble Numbat)
  • Debian 13 (Trixie)
  • Fedora Workstation 43

Only Gnome, KDE and MATE desktop environments are fully supported. Genymotion Desktop may not work correctly or at all with other desktop environments.

Genymotion Desktop is only available for x86_64/amd64 for the moment.

Genymotion Desktop may crash with X11 environment on Ubuntu. We recommend using Wayland instead.

Genymotion Desktop requires an hypervisor to run the Android system.

Genymotion Desktop works as-is with an embedded QEMU hypervisor which uses KVM which is installed by default on our supported distributions, there is no need to install any extra software.

Using VirtualBox on Linux is not recommended and only maintained for retro compatibility.

The Genymotion installer does not include VirtualBox, so it has to be installed separately. To do so, you can follow these instructions:

There are known issues with VirtualBox and kernel 6.14 from Ubuntu 24.04.3LTS. We strongly advise to use QEMU instead.

  1. Download VirtualBox 7.0.26 .deb package for Ubuntu 24.04

  2. Perform a global update and reboot:

    sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade && sudo reboot

  3. Install the downloaded package:

    sudo apt install ./virtualbox-7.0_7.0.26-168464~Ubuntu~noble_amd64.deb

    Press Y and press ENTER to confirm. VirtualBox dependency packages are being downloaded and installed. It may take a while to complete.

    Secure Boot

    If Secure Boot is enabled on your host machine, VirtualBox installer will try to sign its kernel modules during installation and you will need to set a password to your Secure Boot. A full reboot of your system is mandatory to apply the change after installation.

    You will then be prompted at startup by Secure Boot to input the password you set.

  4. Add your user to the vboxusers group:

    sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers $USER

  5. Reboot your PC.

To verify your installation, run the following commands in a terminal:

groups | grep vboxusers

If this command does not return anything, then your user account is not in the vboxusers group. To solve this, run sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers $USER, then log out and in again - or reboot your PC.

Next, verify that VirtualBox kernel modules are properly installed and working:

lsmod | grep -i vbox

If successful, it should return the following:

$ lsmod | grep -i vbox
vboxnetadp             28672  0
vboxnetflt             28672  0
vboxdrv               524288  2 vboxnetadp,vboxnetflt

If not, try to force VirtualBox kernel modules compilation:

sudo vboxconfig

And reboot your PC.

Please refer to VirtualBox wiki for detailed instructions.

Secure Boot

If Secure Boot is enabled on your host machine, VirtualBox installer will try to sign its kernel modules during installation and you will need to set a password to your Secure Boot. A full reboot of your system is mandatory to apply the change after installation.

You will then be prompted at startup by Secure Boot to input the password you set.

Please refer to this article for detailed instructions.

Secure Boot

If Secure Boot is enabled on your host machine, VirtualBox installer will try to sign its kernel modules during installation and you will need to set a password to your Secure Boot. A full reboot of your system is mandatory to apply the change after installation.

You will then be prompted at startup by Secure Boot to input the password you set.

To install Genymotion Desktop on Linux, follow these steps:

  1. Open a terminal and move to your home Download folder1:

    cd ~/Download

  2. Give run permission to the Genymotion installer .run file:

    chmod +x genymotion-X.Y.Z-linux_x64.run

  3. Run the installer. PATH is the install target path2:

    ./genymotion-X.Y.Z-linux_x64.run -d PATH
Global installation (not recommended)

It is possible to install Genymotion globally with the sudo command:

sudo ./genymotion-X.Y.Z-linux_x64.run

This will install Genymotion in /opt/genymotion, however we do not recommend this as it may cause issues due to access permissions.

Quickstart Guide

To start using Genymotion Desktop and run your Android application in a virtual device, follow the steps below.

Sign in

Launch Genymotion Desktop:

Click Genymotion icon from Windows Application menu or desktop.

Click Genymotion icon from the Applications directory.

Click Genymotion icon Genymotion from your distribution Application Launcher, or in a terminal:

$ ~/genymotion/genymotion

If you installed Genymotion in a specific directory, replace ~/genymotion/ by your Genymotion installation path; or, if you installed it globally (with sudo), replace ~/genymotion/ by /opt/.

At first start, Genymotion Desktop will require you to log in:

Genymotion main window

If you already have a Genymotion account, enter your credentials and click NEXT. Otherwise, click on CREATE ACCOUNT to create a new Genymotion account.

A Genymotion account is mandatory to use Genymotion Desktop.

If your host machine network uses a proxy, click View proxy options and set your Proxy type, hostname, port and authentication.

In the Usage panel, select:

  • I have a license: if you have a paid license to activate Genymotion Desktop Pro edition. See How to use register a license for more information.
  • Personal use: if you wish to use Genymotion Desktop free edition with limited feature and no technical support. Please refer to Genymotion legal terms and conditions for more information.

Usage

Read the Terms & Conditions carefully and check I understand and agree to the Terms & Conditions:

EULA

Click NEXT:

dashboard

Create a new device

Click CREATE and select a virtual device template from the list. You can use the search box and Filters to find a specific device profile:

Virtual device installation

Click NEXT or double-click on the template of your choice. The virtual device installation wizard opens:

Install virtual device wizard

In the GENERAL tab, you can change the name and select the Android version of the device:

Select Android version

If you upgraded from a previous version, you can click to force an update of the available Android images.

You can also enable root access from here. See Root Access for more information.

In the SYSTEM tab, you can customize the number of processors, RAM and/or VM Heap size:

System

Click NEXT to proceed. In the DISPLAY tab, you can select the resolution, the window style and the OpenGL ES maximum API version:

Device tab

Click NEXT to proceed. In the Android options tab, you can enable or disable the Android navigation bar (default: enabled) and the virtual keyboard (default: disabled):

Android opt tab

Click NEXT to proceed.

If you use QEMU Hypervisor (see Genymotion settings), you can toggle quick boot feature in the Hypervisor options tab:

Hypervisor options tab

If you use VirtualBox Hypervisor (see Genymotion settings), you can set the NAT (default) or Bridge hypervisor network mode in the Hypervisor options tab:

Hypervisor options tab

Click INSTALL to start the device deployment. Your virtual device is being downloaded and will appear in the dashboard:

Launcher dashboard

If the virtual device deployment fails at this point, you may be running out of free space.

For more details about Virtual Device settings, please refer to this page.

Launch a device

Click , or double click, on your newly created virtual device to start it:

Virtual device main window

  1. It is assumed that downloaded files are in your home Download folder. If not, replace ~/Download with the appropriate path in the command lines. ↩

  2. If the installer is run without -d option, Genymotion will be installed in your current folder, in ./genymotion/. ↩