Fail to start arm64-v8a Android emulator on macOS and Ubuntu runners

[pippocao]

I cannot start an arm64-v8a Android emulator in GitHub Actions. The emulator fails on macOS and Ubuntu runners with different errors depending on the runner.

Relevant workflow run: https://github.com/pippocao/VMActionTest/actions/runs/19367895736/job/55415791259

What I tried

Ubuntu (standard runner): emulator fails with a CPU architecture mismatch error.
Ubuntu ARM runner: sdkmanager fails to install emulator.
macOS runner: emulator fails with HVF errors.

What is the recommended way to run an arm64-v8a Android emulator in GitHub Actions?

[mikehardy]

There is literally no way to do an arm64 emulator in github actions on hosted runners

• mac hosted runners do not support nested virtualization, subscribe issue in runner-images repo for status - may never happen, who knows
• google simple does not publish an emulator for the linux host / arm64 host CPU / arm64 target tuple - they only offer linux / x86_64 / x86_64 in current emulators I believe, subscribe to issue on issuetracker.google.com for status / +1 it to move things forward

Your only viable path forward is to do a self-hosted runner and work that way

I have had some success with a macOS machine and Tartelet as a "disposable VM to Github Runners" bridge, with Tart as the VM runner along with https://github.com/mikehardy/runner-fallback-action so CI can still happen if the runner isn't up (since self-hosted runners are going to be flakier than Github's infrastructure, nearly guaranteed...)

[pippocao]

Thx your reply!