Emulator Snapshots Save a lot of Time

One of the features of the Android emulator that I knew about but never used until recently is snapshots. The snapshot feature lets the emulator save its current state (including the state of the file system, installed apps, etc) and lets the developer reload it again at any time.

This feature is amazing for testing upgrades and fixing upgrade related issues. Install the old version of the app, and do any required setup (preferences that need to be set, data that needs to be added, etc). Take a snapshot. Install the new version and test or debug. Need to go back to the old version? Just load the snapshot again and you’re back to exactly where you left off when you took the snapshot.

This feature could be useful for other things - for example, one could have a snapshot logged into account A and another logged into account B. This makes it easy to test features on different account types without having to log out and log in again.