[android-emulator] How to connect android emulator to the internet

[EDIT] For more recent version of Android Studio, the emulator you need to use is no longer in the ~/Library/Android/sdk/tools folder but in ~/LibraryAndroid/sdk/emulator. If while trying the below solution you get the following message "PANIC: Missing emulator engine program for 'x86' CPU.”, then please refer to https://stackoverflow.com/a/49511666 to update your bash environment.

Operating System : Mac OS X El Capitan

IDE : Android Studio 2.2

For some reasons, I wasn't able to access internet through my AVD at work (probably proxy or network configuration issues). What did the trick for me was to launch in command line my AVD and giving manually the Google public DNS 8.8.8.8.

In your Terminal go to the folder tools of your Android sdk to find the 'emulator' program:

cd ~/Library/Android/sdk/tools

Then retrieve the name of your AVDs :

emulator -list-avds

It will return you something like this:

Android_Wear_Round_API_23
Nexus_10_API_22
Nexus_5X_API_22
Nexus_5X_API_24
Nexus_9_API_24

Then launch the AVD you would like with the following instructions:

emulator -avd NameOfYourDevice -dns-server 8.8.8.8

Your AVD is launched and you should be able to use internet.