CoreDeck is an open source native desktop application around your Android SDK’s official emulator, avdmanager, and sdkmanager binaries — running them for you in one place, through a friendly GUI, so you get the same results without hand-writing commands. Use it for everyday work without opening Android Studio. Built with C++20 and Dear ImGui.
Important
You still need the Android SDK and its tooling on your machine. Installing Android Studio is the usual way to get them.
demo.mp4
- AVD Management — Create, delete, and browse your Android Virtual Devices
- System Image Management — List, install, and uninstall Android system images with ease
- Emulator Control — Launch, stop, or wipe & run AVDs with one click
- Per-AVD Options — Configure GPU, RAM, CPU cores, camera, network, boot mode, and more
- Live Log Viewer — Stream emulator output in real time with search and auto-scroll
- Storage Overview — Inspect per-AVD disk usage and clear heavy or unused data
- SDK Auto-Detection — Picks up your Android SDK from environment variables or standard paths
- Guided Setup — Onboarding wizard to configure the SDK on first run
- Cross-Platform — Runs natively on Windows, macOS, and Linux
| AVD List & Options | Running Emulator & Logs |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Browse AVDs with per-device options and details | Live emulator output with search and auto-scroll |
| Create New AVD | Device Profile Selection |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Configure system image, device, RAM, and GPU mode | Pick from a rich catalog of Android device profiles |
| System Image Browser | Storage Overview |
|---|---|
 |
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| List, install, and remove Android system images | Inspect AVD disk usage and clear heavy data |
Grab the latest prebuilt binaries from the official CoreDeck website or the Releases page:
| Platform | Architecture | File |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | x86-64 | .msi / .zip |
| macOS | arm64 (Apple Silicon) | .dmg |
| Linux | x86-64, arm64 | .tar.gz |
Each release artifact ships with a matching .sha256 checksum for download verification.
- Android SDK with
emulator,avdmanager, andsdkmanageravailable (typically installed via Android Studio). - OS: Windows 10/11, macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon), or a recent Linux distribution.
To build from source you additionally need:
- CMake 3.23 or newer
- A C++20 compiler — GCC 11+, Clang 14+, or MSVC 19.30+ (Visual Studio 2022)
- Linux only: the system packages listed in Build from source
Linux dependencies (Ubuntu/Debian):
build-essential does not include CMake, so it's listed separately:
sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake libcurl4-openssl-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libx11-dev libxrandr-dev libxinerama-dev libxcursor-dev libxi-dev libxext-devBuild:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/devmuaz/CoreDeck.git
cd CoreDeck
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --config Release --parallelIf you already cloned without --recursive:
git submodule update --init --recursiveThe app starts but says my Android SDK isn't detected.
CoreDeck looks at ANDROID_HOME / ANDROID_SDK_ROOT and standard install paths. If your SDK lives elsewhere, point it
at the right location through the onboarding wizard or set the environment variable before launching.
An emulator won't launch / boots forever.
Make sure the matching system image is installed and that hardware acceleration is enabled (HAXM/Hyper-V on Windows,
Hypervisor.framework on macOS, KVM on Linux). The live log viewer usually shows the underlying error from emulator.
Does CoreDeck replace Android Studio? No — it wraps the same official command-line tools that Android Studio uses, so you still need the Android SDK installed. CoreDeck just gives you a focused GUI for AVD and emulator workflows.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for the branching model, PR guidelines, and how to get started.
CoreDeck is built on top of these excellent open source projects:
- Dear ImGui — immediate-mode GUI
- GLFW — windowing and input
- reflect-cpp — reflection and serialization
- tinyfiledialogs — native file dialogs
- Catch2 — testing framework
- sentry-native — crash reporting
See LICENSE for details.