Set up a device: Guided wizard
The guided wizard installs and configures everything needed to run an Android emulator or an iOS simulator on your Mac.
The guided wizard is the supported setup path. It installs the Android or Apple tooling, creates a device, and boots it.
Platforms
Android · iOS
What you get
A booted Android emulator, or a booted iOS simulator
First run
5–10 minutes, most of it one download
Approval
Every shell command is shown to you and waits for Approve or Skip
Watch out
Safe to re-run any number of times — already-installed things are skipped
Prerequisites
Drizz desktop app installed and signed in
macOS 12 or later
Homebrew installed
Java from the Homebrew
openjdk@17package (Android)Xcode installed from the Mac App Store and opened once (iOS)
20–30 GB free disk for Android · 40–50 GB free disk for iOS
Start the wizard
Open the desktop app.
Go to Connect Device.
Select the platform — Android or iOS.
Click Set up a device. With no emulator or simulator present, Drizz offers the guided setup instead of an empty device list.
Approve or skip each command as it is presented.
Confirm the wizard finishes on a booted device listed in the device picker.
The manual guides — Android setup and iOS simulator setup — cover the cases where the wizard fails, or where a configuration it doesn't create is required.
Approval and risk badges
Each step displays the exact shell command it will run, with a risk badge, and waits for Approve or Skip. Nothing runs unapproved. Across a full run the wizard installs software, edits ~/.zshrc, and downloads several gigabytes.
safe
Reads state, or installs into a Drizz-managed path. Nothing on your machine changes meaningfully
moderate
Installs software, or downloads several gigabytes
elevated
Changes your shell environment — writing ANDROID_HOME and PATH into ~/.zshrc
Skip passes over any step you would rather run yourself, or that is already set up in a non-standard location. The wizard continues from the next step.
Re-running
Step 1 of every wizard is a diagnostic of what is already present. Anything already installed is skipped silently, and only missing items are presented for approval. Re-run the wizard after a failed step or an unwanted skip.
Platform flows
Ten steps, ending with a booted emulator.
1
Check
Diagnoses what's already present — Android Studio, adb, the SDK, the system image
2
Android Studio
Installs Android Studio with Homebrew
3
adb
Installs the Android platform tools and links adb into the SDK path the emulator expects
4
SDK tools
Downloads the command-line tools — sdkmanager and avdmanager
5
Env vars
Writes ANDROID_HOME and PATH into ~/.zshrc
6
Licenses
Accepts the Android SDK licenses
7
System image
Downloads the Android 34 Google Play ARM64 image — about 1.8 GB, and the slow step
8
Create AVD
Creates an emulator called DrizzPhone on a Pixel 7 profile
9
Launch
Starts the emulator in the background
10
Wait
Waits for the emulator to finish booting
A first run takes 15–30 minutes, almost all of it in step 7. Later runs take seconds, because steps 2 through 8 are skipped.
The emulator is named DrizzPhone, which identifies it in Android Studio's device list and in adb devices output.
Two phases. Xcode cannot be downloaded programmatically — it ships through the Mac App Store or the Apple Developer Portal, and neither has a public download URL.
Phase 1 — download gate.
Click the wizard's link, which opens the App Store on the Xcode page.
Install Xcode.
Open Xcode once and dismiss the license screen.
Click I've installed & opened Xcode in the wizard.
Confirm the check passes. Drizz verifies that
/Applications/Xcode.appexists. The command-line tools alone do not pass this check.
Phase 2 — setup wizard. Seven steps on the same approve/skip flow as Android, ending with a booted simulator.
Opening Xcode once is required because accepting the Xcode license from the command line only works after the first-launch license screen has been dismissed in Xcode's own window. Otherwise the license step waits for a click that cannot arrive in a background process. Creating a project is not required.
Simulator names come from Apple's tooling — iPhone 17, iPhone Air and so on. Drizz cannot rename them, so there is no iOS equivalent of DrizzPhone. The wizard boots the first available shut-down iPhone.
Known limitations
Java must be in the Homebrew location
The SDK steps expect Java at the Homebrew openjdk@17 path. Java installed elsewhere makes steps 4, 6, 7 and 8 fail. Install Java through Homebrew, or skip those steps and run them from a terminal that has your Java on its PATH.
The license step can hang
Clicking "I've installed & opened Xcode" without opening Xcode starts a license step that never finishes. Quit the wizard, open Xcode, dismiss the license screen, and re-run.
Android Studio may not land in /Applications
A known Homebrew cask behavior on first install. Reinstall the cask, then re-run the wizard:
An emulator that crashes after launch fails quietly
Step 10 times out without reporting a cause. Read the emulator's own log:
Common mistakes
Follow a manual Android Studio guide first
You'll do 20 minutes of work the wizard does for you, in paths it won't recognize
Approve step 7
A 1.8 GB download over a bad connection. Start it somewhere with real bandwidth
Skip step 5 because you don't want ~/.zshrc edited
Drizz still works, but adb and emulator won't be on your own terminal's PATH
Click "I've installed & opened Xcode" after only installing it
The license step hangs. Open Xcode once, then re-run
Re-run the wizard from scratch after one failed step
Fine, and expected. It skips everything already done
Assume a timed-out step 10 means the wizard is broken
The emulator crashed. Read /tmp/emulator.log
Next
Last updated: 6 August 2026
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