For some reason, I cannot get the emulator to work correctly. It appears to be connecting fine, but when I try to actually use it, it shows just a blank white screen instead of showing the app. Has anyone else had this problem or have any suggestions about how to fix it? I'm teaching coding remotely to underprivileged high school students and it's important that I get the emulator to work so that I can do classroom demonstrations on my computer screen for them. I can't do that using the app on my phone.
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Have you loaded a Project? Connect>Emulator
Perhaps, review Installing and Running the Emulator in AI2
AI2 can work with several non-MIT emulators too.
See
Yes, I've loaded a project. I'm following the steps exactly. It's just giving me a blank white screen. I can get the project to show up on my phone and it works fine, but that doesn't really work for my purposes. I need to be able to display the emulator on the screen for my students to be able to see what is happening from a remote setting.
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I too am having issues with the stock emulator in App Inventor. I reloaded aiStarter and initially get your white screen; then try it again and get error messages. I suspect there are issues with new aiStarter installations but can not be sure. MIT technical staff has been informed; no idea when they will reply.
Perhaps you can use an alternative emulator (not the one with aiStarter).. There are several; see ABG's post. 
i have been also having the same issue. Every time I press connect it just goes to a white screen. Can anyone help me with that
Other emulators can't be installed on student Chromebooks (admin privileges). I'm working with students located all over our state. Looks like this has been an issue for awhile, but I didn't teach this course last summer. I provided MIT support with a video of the issue, but no response so far.
Hi Stefanie.
MIT needs to sort this issue out. I know they are developing a replacement emulator but there are still issues with the replacement. It is being tested but the new emulator is not ready for release yet due to installation issues etc.. Perhaps @ewpatton or @Susan_Lane from the development team could comment.
It is important here that we clarify that the emulator option is not the same as the Chromebook option.
If you're using Chromebooks, you can either use a device running the companion app (either Android or iOS), or you can run the companion app on the Chromebook if it supports running Android apps. In some cases, the school/district may prevent installing of Android apps on the Chromebook to students, but the app can still be installed centrally from the Google Apps for Education domain.
The emulator package that we publish is for PC/Mac/Linux, and is made up of two programs: aiStarter and the Android emulator. aiStarter provides a mechanism for the App Inventor web application to talk to the Android emulator. Technically, you can use a newer version of the emulator software so long as you start it before selecting the Emulator option (otherwise, the built-in emulator package is launched). We are trying to tackle two known issues in the next version of aiStarter before the end of the summer so that it is ready for the coming school year.