adb does not see visual studio emulator for android instance

I was facing similar issue and in my case the setup was like following

Versions

• Windows 10 pro Version 1803 (OS Build 17134.165)
• Visual Studio Emulator for Android Android
• OS hosted byemulator Marshmallow (6.0.0) (4.4) API Level 24 Emulated Device 5.7"screen XXDPI Phone "Similar to Samsung Galaxy note4"

In my case I also installed Android Studio which I think it has contributed to the problem by installing SDK under my user folder

C:\Users\[name with space]\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk

Visual Studio also installed Sdk in program files

C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk

I decided to move/install android-sdk in c:\Android to avoid issue

Android SDK location should not contain whitespace, as this cause problems with NDK tools

Solution

What I had to do was to consolidate all the Environment variables and Registry entries to point to the right folder

This Stackoverflow question/answer would help in setting registry

'Visual Studio Emulator for Android' devices are not listed in the Android Device Monitor

Then from within visual studio (Tools > Android > Android SDK Manager) open SDK Manager

Go to tools tap and make sure "Android SDK Location" is set to C:\Android\Sdk and also following items are checked

Then in environment variable make sure There is System Environment variable called ANDROID_HOME and the value should also be c:\android\sdk

In my case there was a ANDROID_HOME User Environment which was overriding the system one. Either get rid of that or change it to c:\android\sdk

Once you've updated all these registry and environment variables close all command prompt windows and open a new one (to have environment variables set correctly)

Then check android home by running following command

C:\>echo %ANDROID_HOME%c:\android\sdk

Also echo %path% and it should have a path pointing to c:\android\sdk\platform-tools and no other pathsThen run adb --version and make sure it is running as c:\android\

and then run

adb kill-serveradb start-server

Once you have done that lunch Visual Studio for Android and run your image of choice. Then adb devices should return the emulator IP address

Extra Resources

There is a good documentation for general troubleshooting the Visual Studio for Android which you can follow for initial troubleshooting:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt228282.aspx