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

CoreDeck can download and install Google's official command-line tools for you on first run if you don't have Android Studio installed, or you can point it at an existing SDK (for example the one from Android Studio). CoreDeck can run without Android Studio installed, if your intent is to only play around Android's emulators and its tooling

demo.mp4

Features

• 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
• SDK Installer — Downloads Google's official command-line tools and installs the platform tools and emulator, without Android Studio
• JDK Configuration — Auto-detects a compatible JDK and lets you point at a specific one when your system default is too old
• Guided Setup — Onboarding wizard to install or locate the SDK on first run
• Cross-Platform — Runs natively on Windows, macOS, and Linux

Preview

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
List, install, and remove Android system images	Inspect AVD disk usage and clear heavy data

Downloads

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.

Requirements

• Android SDK with emulator, avdmanager, and sdkmanager available. CoreDeck can install these for you from the onboarding wizard, or you can use an existing SDK (for example one installed via Android Studio).
• JDK 17+ — the avdmanager and sdkmanager command-line tools are Java programs and require JDK 17 or newer. CoreDeck auto-detects a suitable JDK (including the one bundled with Android Studio) and lets you select a specific one under Preferences → Java (JDK) if your system default is older.
• OS: Windows 10/11, macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon), or a recent Linux distribution.

Build from source

CoreDeck builds with CMake + Ninja on all platforms. Output is single-config: build-debug/ and build-release/ contain the binary directly, with a compile_commands.json for editor tooling.

Prerequisites

All platforms need CMake 3.23+, Ninja, and Git (with submodule support). Per-platform compiler:

Platform	Compiler	Install
macOS	Apple Clang	xcode-select --install, then brew install cmake ninja
Windows	MSVC 19.30+ (VS 2022)	Build Tools for VS 2022 → Desktop development with C++ workload. Then winget install Kitware.CMake Ninja-build.Ninja
Linux	GCC 11+ / Clang 14+	sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake ninja-build libcurl4-openssl-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libx11-dev libxrandr-dev libxinerama-dev libxcursor-dev libxi-dev libxext-dev

Clone and build

git clone --recursive https://github.com/devmuaz/CoreDeck.git
cd CoreDeck
cmake -S . -B build-release -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build-release --parallel

If you already cloned without --recursive:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Windows note: Ninja + MSVC needs cl.exe on PATH. Run the commands from the Developer Command Prompt for VS 2022 (Start Menu), or launch VS Code / Cursor from it so the bundled tasks pick up the environment. The provided VS Code tasks handle this automatically via vswhere + Enter-VsDevShell.

Run

# macOS
open build-release/CoreDeck.app

# Linux
./build-release/CoreDeck

# Windows
.\build-release\CoreDeck.exe

Develop in VS Code or Cursor

The repo ships pre-configured .vscode/ settings (build tasks, launch configs, IntelliSense). Open the project, accept the recommended extensions when prompted, then press F5 to build and debug.

Per-editor extensions — the two editors use different language servers and debuggers:

Editor	Install	Purpose
VS Code	ms-vscode.cpptools, ms-vscode.cmake-tools	IntelliSense + CMake integration + cppvsdbg (Microsoft MSVC debugger)
VS Code (optional)	vadimcn.vscode-lldb	Adds LLDB debugger as an alternative to MSVC
Cursor	llvm-vs-code-extensions.vscode-clangd, vadimcn.vscode-lldb	clangd IntelliSense + LLDB debugger (Microsoft's cppvsdbg is locked to VS Code)
Cursor (Windows only)	LLVM toolchain — winget install LLVM.LLVM	Provides the clangd.exe binary for the extension

Launch configurations in the Run & Debug panel:

Name	Editors	Debugger
CoreDeck (Debug) [macOS]	VS Code or Cursor	cppdbg + LLDB
CoreDeck (Debug) [Windows · MSVC]	VS Code only	cppvsdbg
CoreDeck (Debug) [Windows · LLDB]	VS Code or Cursor	CodeLLDB

Each has a matching Release entry and CoreDeck Tests (...) variant for the Catch2 test suite. Cursor on Windows should pick the LLDB entries; VS Code on Windows can pick either (MSVC is the better PDB-aware option when available).

The first build is a full from-scratch compile of all bundled dependencies (sentry-native, Dear ImGui, GLFW, reflect-cpp, etc.). Subsequent builds are incremental and fast.

FAQ

The 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. If you don't have an SDK at all, choose Install SDK... and CoreDeck will download it for you.

Can CoreDeck install the Android SDK for me? Yes. When no SDK is found, the onboarding wizard offers to install one. CoreDeck downloads Google's official command-line tools archive (verified against a pinned SHA-256), extracts it to a folder you choose, accepts the SDK licenses, and then installs platform-tools and emulator with sdkmanager. A JDK 17 or newer must already be present, since the command-line tools are Java programs — the wizard asks you to pick one if none is detected. The install is self-contained: CoreDeck remembers the location for itself and never modifies your PATH, ANDROID_HOME, or JAVA_HOME.

Creating AVDs or installing system images fails, or nothing happens. avdmanager and sdkmanager require JDK 17 or newer. If your default java is older (e.g. JDK 8/1.8), these tools fail even when the SDK is fine. CoreDeck warns you when it detects an incompatible JDK — open Preferences → Java (JDK) and point it at a compatible JDK (the one bundled with Android Studio works well). CoreDeck runs the tools with that JDK via JAVA_HOME without changing your global default.

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? Not in general. CoreDeck wraps the same official command-line tools that Android Studio uses, and it can install those tools for you — so for AVD and emulator work you don't need Android Studio at all. It is not an IDE though: writing, building, and debugging Android apps still needs Android Studio (or Gradle plus your own editor).

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the branching model, PR guidelines, and how to get started.

Acknowledgements

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

License

See LICENSE for details.