Visual Studio Emulator for Android is a tool that allows Android developers to test and debug their apps from the desktop OS of their choosing.

The Visual Studio Emulator for Android is a tool within the full Visual Studio 2015 suite, which Microsoft brought to Mac users for the first time back in April.

Microsoft developers building software for Android have noticed this, so the company developed its own high-performance Android emulator. That emulator is included with Visual Studio 2015.

As Microsoft evolves its emulator to be more flexible, it becomes a more attractive way for developers to test their apps. The new emulator was released yesterday with CTP6.

A skunkworks project by Xamarin, the developers of Mono for Android and Mono Touch, machine-translated millions of lines of Java in Android to C#.

The new tool is currently available in preview, but it comes with the Visual Studio 2015 preview, so to get the emulator you’ll have to download the full package from the Microsoft Download Center.