flutter devices doesn't properly list emulator names

Steps to Reproduce

Create and name some AVDs in the Android Virtual Device Manager
Run flutter devices

=> list shows the wrong names of the AVDs

mit-macbookpro2:battery mit$ flutter devices
2 connected devices:

Android SDK built for x86 64 • emulator-5554                        • android-x64 • Android 7.1.1 (API 25) (emulator)
iPhone 5s                    • 603DCE1D-B3A5-48CD-A309-1C45ED7AC3CF • ios         • iOS 10.3 (simulator)

@tvolkert

cc @tvolkert any idea who knows how this device detection works?

@devoncarew

cc @devoncarew looks like the devices are correctly named in IntelliJ. How do we get the names there?

Hmm, we're using the same logic as flutter_tools (and in fact, just asking it for the list of devices). AVDs names can be different from the device names that start from the AVD; I don't know of a way (using the android tools) to reconcile the names.

@mit-mit

looks like the devices are correctly named in IntelliJ

The IntelliJ screenshot shows the same output as flutter devices (which makes sense since it just delegates to flutter_tools).

@mit-mit if you do a straight-up adb devices, which name does it list?

Sorry, I should have been more clear: IntelliJ seems to show a different string for emulators that are already running, and ones that are not running. The names for the stopped ones are the correct/interesting ones:

mit-mit if you do a straight-up adb devices, which name does it list?

That gives me a third set of names:

mit-macbookpro2:trans mit$ adb devices
List of devices attached
emulator-5556	device
emulator-5554	device

IntelliJ seems to show a different string for emulators that are already running

These names we're getting from adb (adb devices -l may show you longer versions of the names).

and ones that are not running

These names we're getting from the emulator command. I don't know how to reconcile the names from the two commands - to match up which one goes with which device.

These links may provide some hint for getting better device names:

android/tools/adt/idea/android/src/com/android/tools/idea/run/AndroidDeviceRenderer.java
android/tools/adt/idea/android/src/com/android/tools/idea/explorer/adbimpl/AdbDeviceFileSystemRenderer.java

The highlighted emulator is started

The selected shows just

This output doesn't contain the custom defined name Pixel 2 API 28

 $ adb devices -l
List of devices attached
emulator-5554          device product:sdk_gphone_x86 model:Android_SDK_built_for_x86 device:generic_x86 transport_id:5

This produces different output but still does not contain my custom defined name.

 $ flutter devices
1 connected device:

Android SDK built for x86 • emulator-5554 • android-x86 • Android 9 (API 28) (emulator)

@jonahwilliams

@jonahwilliams @devoncarew FYI - this might be relevant if we start showing devices + emulators in a single list in future. Running emulators would appear twice (once as a running device, once as an available emulator - which may fail to launch because it's already running).

The answer may be in the Android Studio files Devon mentions above, though I couldn't find anything obvious with a quick dig around there.

@mit-mit

@mit-mit @devoncarew I was just making some improvements in this area in VS Code after it came up again. I got this working (by having VS Code use the Emulator name for the Device - it alread matches these up as part of the new device picker work) - here's the offline emulators:

And after launching two of them, they now show with the same emulator names:

Previously they'd show as "Android SDK built for x86 (mobile)".

However I'm thinking again about whether we should do it here instead so all editors and cli get it. Running flutter devices would have to connect to each device (we already do that for the daemon devices now but not for the command line) and and then read the name from the ini files. We should have all the code to do this, so I think the implications are:

performance (it'll make flutter devices a little slower)
more potential for failure (running flutter devices might stall on timeouts for bad device connections, or fail to find the emulator files if they're not in a standard location)
leaking knowledge about emulators into the devices commands

If we'd rather not do that, I'll finish the fix in VS Code, but otherwise I can try it here.

@mit-mit

Hi @mit-mit
Given the merges and closed issues mentioned above
Does this issue still exist?
Thank you

I think this still exists. The VS Code extension matches these up client-side to improve the presentation there (emulators and devices are shown in the same list so without this, the same device would appear twice with different names). It would be nice to have that logic handler in Flutter though (for the benefit of other editors and the command line tool).

@christopherfujino

Fyi @christopherfujino now could be a good time to revisit this. We're now adding a delay to Flutter Tools to wait for iOS devices connected via WIFI on Mac so it would be faster if we loaded the proper emulator names at the same time as we waited for wifi devices to show up (relative to waiting for the emulator names from VSCode like we do now). This would also help keep the DevExp experience consistent across all IDEs.

@DanTup

Fyi @DanTup who added the support for this directly to the VSCode plugin

I think there are probably a few parts to this. There are a few different places we output devices but it's not clear to me exactly what should show where:

1. Output of `flutter devices`

This is a simple table like:

Found 4 connected devices:
  sdk gphone x86 64 (mobile) • emulator-5554 • android-x64    • Android 13 (API 33) (emulator)
  Windows (desktop)          • windows       • windows-x64    • Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22621.2283]
  Chrome (web)               • chrome        • web-javascript • Google Chrome 118.0.5993.89
  Edge (web)                 • edge          • web-javascript • Microsoft Edge 117.0.2045.43

The top item here is an emulator and the emulator name (which we get by connecting to the emulator) is Pixel_3a_API_33_x86_64. Should this name replace one of the existing fields, or should we add a new column for the name from the emulator?

2. Output of `flutter devices --machine`

This output is JSON, and includes devices like:

  {
    "name": "sdk gphone x86 64",
    "id": "emulator-5554",
    "isSupported": true,
    "targetPlatform": "android-x64",
    "emulator": true,
    "sdk": "Android 13 (API 33)",
    "capabilities": {
      "hotReload": true,
      "hotRestart": true,
      "screenshot": true,
      "fastStart": true,
      "flutterExit": true,
      "hardwareRendering": true,
      "startPaused": true
    }
  },

Should we add new fields (emulatorId, emulatorName?), or replace the existing name? Or a new field that is the whole emulator object? The work is essentially the same as the above, we just need to define the output format (replacing the existing name will show up in IDEs without changes, but adding new fields will require some IDE changes).

3. `flutter daemon` device events

This is what the IDEs use, and when a new device shows up it sends a payload like this:

{
	"event": "device.added",
	"params": {
		"id": "emulator-5554",
		"name": "sdk gphone x86 64",
		"platform": "android-x64",
		"emulator": true,
		"category": "mobile",
		"platformType": "android",
		"ephemeral": true,
		"emulatorId": "Pixel_3a_API_33_x86_64",
		"sdk": "Android 13 (API 33)",
		"capabilities": {
			"hotReload": true,
			"hotRestart": true,
			"screenshot": true,
			"fastStart": true,
			"flutterExit": true,
			"hardwareRendering": true,
			"startPaused": true
		}
	}
}

The JSON here is the same as the above so we'd probably want to match it. We'd probably want to keep a short cache of emulators to look up the names (since we only get the IDs when we connect to the emulator). Without a cache we'll fetch the emulators multiple times when several devices show up at startup, and with a long cache we don't detect newly-created emulators while the IDE is open.

It would be useful to get to get DanTup's suggestion implemented. Still cant map emulator names to device id for effective integration testing in ci.

Edit:
I found a solution per bash magic for android devices. Just replace my_custom_emulator_name and you will get the emulator_id as stated in flutter devices and you are able to use the -d parameter for flutter run.

adb devices | sed 1d | xargs -L1 | awk '{print $1}' | while read -r line; do echo "$line $(adb -s $line emu avd name)\t"; done | awk '$2 ~ /my_custom_emulator_name/ {print $1; found=1} END {exit !found}'

Resolve issue flutter#11850: Resolve emulator display names in flutte…

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`flutter devices` doesn't properly list emulator names #11850

Steps to Reproduce

1. Output of `flutter devices`

2. Output of `flutter devices --machine`

3. `flutter daemon` device events

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flutter devices doesn't properly list emulator names #11850

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Steps to Reproduce

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mit-mit commented on Aug 30, 2017

mit-mit commented on Aug 30, 2017

devoncarew commented on Aug 30, 2017

tvolkert commented on Sep 7, 2017

mit-mit commented on Sep 11, 2017

mit-mit commented on Sep 11, 2017

devoncarew commented on Sep 11, 2017

devoncarew commented on Sep 19, 2017

zoechi commented on Dec 28, 2018

DanTup commented on May 22, 2019

DanTup commented on Sep 11, 2019

TahaTesser commented on Mar 12, 2020

DanTup commented on Mar 12, 2020

jacob314 commented on Oct 25, 2023

jacob314 commented on Oct 25, 2023

DanTup commented on Oct 26, 2023

1. Output of flutter devices

2. Output of flutter devices --machine

3. flutter daemon device events

ahmdt commented on Dec 18, 2024

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`flutter devices` doesn't properly list emulator names #11850

1. Output of `flutter devices`

2. Output of `flutter devices --machine`

3. `flutter daemon` device events