4 Free Ways to Run Android Apps on Your PC

Want to use Android apps on a PC? There are plenty of good, free ways to emulate Android right on your computer, including the Your Phone app, BlueStacks, Genymotion, and Android-x86. Let’s take a look.

Ever wish you could run an Android app or game on your PC so you weren’t relegated to a tiny phone screen? Or maybe you need to test a feature on Android, but don’t have an Android device handy. Here are four free ways to run Android (and its apps) on your computer.

Mirror Your Phone With Windows

For apps installed on your phone, you don’t need anything fancy to get Android on your PC. The Windows Your Phone app provides the ability to mirror the screen of many Samsung phones to your PC, with access to most of your apps through a simple desktop window. Just follow our instructions on connecting your phone to Windows, then choose the Phone Screen option in the sidebar to mirror your device.

Microsoft is working on expanding this feature even further, with the ability to pin Android apps on your taskbar and launch them individually, as long as your phone and computer are connected. At the time of writing, this feature is available in Windows 10’s Insider Previews and is slowly rolling out to the general public.

This isn’t always the ideal solution. If you’re looking to play games, this may come with some delay and graphical blurriness, and you won’t be able to easily share files from your PC directly to an app in Android. But for quick access to Android apps you already have installed, it definitely works in a pinch.

Run Your Favorite Apps With BlueStacks

If you’re just looking to run a couple apps and don’t need the emulator to look like Android, you should try BlueStacks. Over the years, it’s become the best Android app emulator around, and it’s packed with features that ensure your apps and games run smoothly. Since it uses virtualization to emulate Android, you’ll want to jump into your computer’s BIOS and enable Intel VT-x or AMD-V, if your computer supports it, for best performance.

Download and install BlueStacks as you would any other Windows or Mac application. It’ll take up about 2GB of space on your computer (plus any apps you download), and when it launches, you’ll be greeted with its customized home screen. It doesn’t mimic a traditional Android launcher, but you do get access to the Play Store to download any apps you want—they’ll appear on BlueStacks’ home screen and on your Windows desktop as their own shortcuts. Just double-click an icon to run the app in question.

BlueStacks is great for apps that don’t have corresponding desktop apps, but the emulator really shines when it comes to games. BlueStacks comes with built-in mappings for your mouse and keyboard, which you can customize to the touch controls you find on different Android games.

You can also adjust the resolution, DPI, FPS, and amount of CPU or RAM allocated to the emulator, ensuring you get the best balance between speed and graphical fidelity. (This is particularly useful given that BlueStacks is fairly resource-intensive, as many virtual machines are.)

BlueStacks does, unfortunately, come with some ads and clutter, but it’s not as intrusive as it once was, and it’s a small price to pay for the functionality you get—especially considering it uses Android 7.1 as its base, which is higher than most alternatives on the market.

Emulate Full Android Experience With Genymotion

If you’re looking to explore the Android operating system itself—rather than individual apps—Genymotion is a decent emulator. Its main product is designed for developers and costs money to use, but there is a free version of the software you can download for personal use; you just need to create an account on the website first.

Genymotion uses VirtualBox to emulate Android, so you’ll either need to have VirtualBox installed on your PC or download the version with VirtualBox bundled. Install it like you would any other Windows program, ensuring you select the version for «Personal Use» during the wizard. (And like BlueStacks, you’ll want to enable Intel VT-x or AMD-V from your computer’s BIOS if you have it.)

When you start Genymotion, it’ll present you with a list of device templates you can install—this determines the screen resolution, Android version, and resources allotted to the emulator. Install the template you want and double-click it to enter Android. You’ll be able to navigate around the home screen, launch apps, and emulate certain events like GPS location.

Note that you’ll start with a very barebones version of Android that doesn’t even come with many of Google’s apps or modern features, though you can add the Play Store by clicking the «Open Gapps» icon in the sidebar to install it. Also, no matter which template you choose, you won’t get any custom versions of Android—picking the Samsung Galaxy S10 template, for example, won’t get you Samsung’s One UI. It just determines the resolution and specs of the virtual machine. (Genymotion does support Android versions from 4.4 all the way up to 10.0, though.)

Genymotion works well for exploring Android’s settings and other built-in features, though I wouldn’t necessarily use it to run individual apps, as it just doesn’t integrate as well with your PC as something like BlueStacks. If Genymotion doesn’t suit your needs, Google’s official Android software development kit also comes with an Android emulator, though setup is a bit more complex, so I wouldn’t recommend it for most users.

Run Android Directly on Your PC With Android-x86

If you’re looking for something a bit more full-featured, the Android-x86 project gets you as close as you can get to true Android on your PC. Android-x86 is an open-source project that ports Android to the x86 platform, allowing you to run it on your computer instead of an ARM-based phone or tablet.

To run Android-x86, you have a couple of options. If you want to run Android on its own, as a desktop operating system for your PC, you can download it as an ISO disc image and burn it to a USB drive with a program like Rufus. Then, insert that USB drive into the PC in question, reboot, and enter the boot menu (usually by pressing a key like F12 during the boot process).

By booting from your Android-x86 USB drive, you’ll either be able to run Android in a live environment—without having any effect on your PC—or install it to your PC’s hard drive for permanent usage (and better performance).

Alternatively, if you want to run Android-x86 on top of your existing operating system, you can download the disc image and run it inside VirtualBox. This is, again, a bit more advanced if you aren’t familiar with VirtualBox, but our guide to running Windows on a Mac can get you acquainted with the process.

The official site has some tips for getting Android-x86 up and running in a virtual machine as well. It’s more work than using something like BlueStacks, but it’s also closer to pure Android, which is a nice perk.

6 Ways to Play Android Games on Windows PC

It is not always possible to go with the installation and un-installation processes for checking each and every app on your smartphone or tablet. Better, you find some way to play the Android Games on a Windows PC which has sufficient memory and space.

Playing Android Games on a Windows PC is not so hard as Intel has decided to launch “Dual OS” PC with Windows 8 and Android platform. This lets you boot your computer directly into the Android system, hence installing the apps or games on your PC. But, you won’t have to buy a new PC only for the purpose of playing a game. Plenty of Android app emulators are available to run Android Games and Apps in almost all Windows environments.

In this article, we’ve brought 6 various ways to play Android Games on Windows 7, Windows 8, and even on Windows XP. Not only the games but you can also run any Android app at the Windows system.

1. Install BlueStacks to Play Android Games on PC

BlueStacks is an Android emulator that does not actually replace your operating system. Rather, it acts just like another software that is easy to install. Once you install it, you can run BlueStacks into a separate window at your Windows desktop.
The BlueStacks environment is very similar to that of Android. It allows you to connect with Google Play store and install the apps and games at your emulator. If you grab the APK file from your friend’s device or download it from somewhere else, you can still install that game/app at your computer using BlueStacks. Thus, you can install and play any android game at your Windows computer. This way you can also run WhatsApp on a PC.

2. Install Android SDK to run Android Games on PC

Another alternative is the Android SDK, the official emulator for the Android app developers by Google. This tool is not a suitable choice for daily use as it is slower and difficult to configure. This is actually useful for the developers to test the apps.
If you are willing to go with it, download Google’s Android SDK and open the SDK manager program. Now, select Tools > Manage AVDs. Here, you can create the Android Virtual Device with your own configuration. Once created, click the ‘Start’ button to launch it.

3. Play Android games on Genymotion, an alternative to BlueStacks

Another Android emulator is Genymotion which is quite impressive with its speed and features. It can be considered as the best alternative to BlueStacks.

It allows the drag-and-drop installation of apps and games. You can test any app or game on a big screen. It also supports the sensor system and open GL.
You can download Genymotion from here.

4. Run Android Apps and Games from your Browser

Unlike the above desktop-based Android emulators, Manymo which is a browser-based emulator does not require any installation or complex configuration to run the Android apps. Just browse this link and upload your app to the test. The interesting thing about Manymo is that you can embed any Android app or game on any webpage by using this browser-based emulator.

5. Use Android X-86
This is a desktop version of the Android OS which can be run natively in AMD and Intel processors. You can install this version just like you install the Windows or Linux operating systems in your x-86 based computers.
As Android X-86 is a community project, it currently supports a few numbers of devices like Del Inspiron Mini Duo, Samsung Q1U, ASUS Eee PCs, Viliv S5, Lenovo ThinkPad x61 Tablet and Viewsonic Viewpad 10.

Another interesting thing about Android X-86 is that you can install it on a virtual machine using VMware or Virtual box.

6. Use Live Android to run Android Games on PC
Live Android is another complete OS for Android games and apps which can boot separately in a laptop or desktop computer. As it is an OS, you can also install it in VMware or Virtual Box to test Android apps and games.

Conclusion:
A lot of Android emulators have been available from the past few years but to be frank, they did not have any purpose. The touch screens with Windows 8 and Tablets gave a reason for using them to test various Android games and apps out of almost 750000 in the count.

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