Android emulator

Fixes for Android emulator stream, color and speed problems.

Stream does not start or encoder crashes

Most often the AVD uses an untested google_apis_playstore image. Recreate the AVD with the tested google_apis/arm64-v8a image:

sdkmanager "system-images;android-35;google_apis;arm64-v8a"
avdmanager create avd -n Pixel_8 -k "system-images;android-35;google_apis;arm64-v8a"

Colors look different from the emulator (less saturated)

Colors in tapflow may look slightly less saturated than the Android emulator window. This is expected — and tapflow is actually the more faithful reference.

• tapflow renders the pixel values from the agent's H.264 stream as-is, so it stays close to your design source (Figma, etc.).
• The emulator window runs the image through an extra display color-processing step when drawing to the screen, which boosts saturation above the source.

For reviewing design colors, tapflow is the more trustworthy reference.

Measured example

Measuring a flat solid orange swatch with a color picker:

Source (Figma)	tapflow	Emulator
#FF8000 (G=128)	#FF7700 (G=119)	#FF6C00 (G=108)

tapflow (G=119) stays closer to the source (G=128), while the emulator (G=108) drifts further from it, rendering a more saturated orange.

Black (#000000), white (#FFFFFF), and pure R/G/B are identical across all three — the difference appears only in midtone saturation, not from a corrupted stream.

Emulator is slow when the Mac is unattended

tapflow automatically prevents the host Mac from idle-sleeping while the agent is running (caffeinate -di, or caffeinate -i when TAPFLOW_ALLOW_DISPLAY_SLEEP is set). The assertion is acquired when the agent connects and released when it exits.

If the emulator is still slow when the Mac is unattended, check the following.

Check	Why it matters
Power adapter connected	Battery mode lowers CPU performance — caffeinate does not override this scaling.
Laptop lid is open	Closing the lid triggers clamshell sleep, which caffeinate cannot prevent.