Is there a way to only run a specific set of instrumentation tests in an Android Gradle project?

Since Android Gradle Plugin 1.3.0

Starting from version 1.3.0 you can (finally!) specify the arguments the Android Gradle Plugin have to pass to the InstrumentationTestRunner.

For example, if you want to run only the tests annotated with @SmallTest and ignore the others:

android {
  //....
  defaultConfig {
  //....
    testInstrumentationRunner "android.support.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner"
    testInstrumentationRunnerArgument "size", "small"
  }
}

---

Old workaround Prior to plugin 1.3.0 is not possible to do that but I've found a little workaound. Basically I've annotated with the @SmallTest annotation the fast tests and using a custom subclass of the InstrumentationTestRunner I'm able to run just them and not the whole suite.

You can found the example code in this gist.