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The emulator

Trq drives an emulator or a plugged-in phone through the same panel, and the same session runs on either — see A real phone for USB debugging and device states. This page is about emulators.

A mobile session runs a real Android AVD embedded inside Trq, the way a device shows up in Android Studio's "Running Devices" — low latency, no separate window.

An Android emulator embedded in Trq, with the on-screen navigation bar

Picking a device​

The control above the device panel lists everything Trq can reach, and it always names the device you are driving:

  • Connected — running emulators and plugged-in phones, side by side. Picking one switches to it immediately.
  • Start an AVD — emulators you have but aren't running. Picking one starts it; the row is an action, not a selection.

An emulator that is already running is picked up on its own, so there is no separate attach step.

Trq runs one emulator at a time — it owns a fixed serial and port — so starting an AVD stops whichever one is running. It asks first when that would cost you something, and just starts when nothing is up. Booting takes about half a minute; the panel shows each stage, and the control reads Starting <name>… with a blue dot until the device is actually drivable.

AVDs start headlessly: the only display is Trq's canvas. The device appears in the panel and you interact with it directly — tap, type, scroll — plus an on-screen Back / Home / Recent / Power bar.

Works across screen sizes​

Coordinate-based steps (a tap on an element with no stable locator, a swipe, a long-press) record the device resolution they were captured at. On replay, if the current device is a different size, Trq scales those coordinates to it — so a flow recorded on one screen still runs on another.

To set up the AVD in the first place, see Android setup.