When you have an Android emulator running on your Mac, does your audio sound horrible?

I would often listen to music while coding, but every time I needed to use an Android emulator I would have to mute it. A strange side-effect of running an emulator is that your Mac's system audio becomes highly distorted.

Luckily I have found a fix.

All you need to do is make a quick edit in the emulator's config file.

To do this, first open Android Studio and open the Device Manager.

Then find your emulator in the list and click the down arrow on the far right to display a drop down menu.

In this menu, select "Show on Disk".

This will open a finder window in the directory where your emulator is located. In this directory, find the config.ini file and open it in an editor.

Now search the file for hw.audioInput.

You will likely find that it is set to yes. All you need to do is change this to no:

You may also find a line with hw.audioOutput set to yes. If so, you should also change that line to no.

Now save the file.

That's it!

Now when you open the emulator, there should be no change in the audio playing on your Mac.

Obviously this does have the side-effect of disabling audio on the emulator, so if you're working on an audio-based app, this solution may not work for you.

If you have a situation where you temporarily need to re-enable the audio on the emulator, all you need to do is change the settings back to yes.

Now go and enjoy the bliss of Android development without the requirement of poor quality music in your headphones. 😎🎶