Android Studio - Virtual Device takes too much disk space even with default settings (4x more space than normal)

Issue

When I create a Virtual Device in Android Studio, it takes 4+ GB of disk space when freshly created with the default settings. It normally takes between 500MB and 1.5GB as I could see on some other questions related to Virtual Devices and the screenshots of the official Android documentation.

Here's a screenshot of my devices when freshly created with default settings:

My Virtual Devices

As you see, the Pixel phone is taking 4.5GB of space and the Nexus 5X is taking 4.3GB.

Also, we did exact same process with a colleague and here's a screenshot of her freshly created Virtual Devices:

My colleague's Virtual Devices

As you can see, in her case, the Pixel phone is taking 503MB and the Nexus 5X is taking 1.1GB.

We both used the same default settings as you can see here:

Virtual Devices settings 1

Virtual Devices settings 2

We both have the same platforms:

MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6

Android Studio 3.1.3

Does anyone have idea of what is generating this oversizing on my Virtual Devices?

Thanks for your help.

Solution

Today i accidentally solved the issue. I needed to perform some updates on the Android Studio while installing some libraries and i updated:

Android Platform SDK 28 (which was the one i was using for my Virtual Devices) to Revision 6 and the Google APIs Intel x86 Atom System Image for that SDK to Revison 5.

I also updated the Android SDK Platform Tools to 28.0.1, the Android SDK Tools to 26.1.1 and the Intel x86 Emulator Accelelator (HAXM Installer) to 7.3.0.

Then, i needed to test on another Virtual Device and it was created and ran starting at 1.0 GB. So i decided to delete my current devices and create them again after this update. I created once again the two Virtual Devices that are show above on the question and the results were the following:

• Pixel phone -> Now starts at 1.0 GB
• Nexus 5X phone -> Now starts at 1.1 GB

Which is four times less than before the update.

So, basically, the solution and recommendation is to try to keep everything up to date! :)

Answered By - Edgar Bonilla