Have you ever wished you could run Android apps on PC so that you are not relegated to the small screen of your phone? Or perhaps you have a feature to examine on Android, but don’t own a useful Android device. In this post, we will share the possible 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 to get Android on your PC. The Windows Your Telephone app offers the ability to mirror the screen of most Samsung phones on your PC, allowing you to use most of your apps from a simple desktop. Microsoft is in the process of 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.
This is not necessarily the best solution. If you’re trying to play games, this might introduce some lag and image blur, and you won’t have the ability to share documents from your PC directly to an app on Android. But for quick access to the Android apps you have set up, it certainly works in a pinch.
Emulate Android With Genymotion
If you want to explore the Android operating system – and not just the individual apps – Genymotion is a decent emulator. Genymotion uses VirtualBox to emulate Android. Therefore, you need to have VirtualBox installed on your PC or download the version with VirtualBox in the package. When you start Genymotion, you’ll be provided with a list of device templates that you can configure, which determine the screen resolution, the Android version, and the resources assigned to the emulator. You’ll be able to browse the home display, launch applications, and categorize particular occasions like GPS location. Genymotion works well for exploring Android preferences along with other built-in features. If Genymotion doesn’t meet your needs, Google’s official Android App Development Kit also has an Android emulator, though it’s a bit more complex to install, so I wouldn’t recommend it for most consumers.
Run Your Apps With BlueStacks
If you just want to run some apps and don’t need the emulator to look like Android, then you should try BlueStacks. Over time, this emulator has become the best app emulator for Android, and it is packed with features that ensure your apps and games run smoothly. It requires about 2GB of space on your PC (and the apps you download), and when it starts up, you’ll be greeted with its customized home screen. BlueStacks includes built-in mappings for your mouse and keyboard, which you can customize into the signature controllers found in various Android games. BlueStacks, unfortunately, contains a bit of clutter and ads, but it’s not that intrusive, and it’s a small price to pay for the functionality you get – especially considering it runs Android 7.1 from its base, which may be superior to many options on the market.
Use Android-x86 on Your PC
Android-x86 is an open-source project that brings Android to the x86 platform so you can run it on your computer instead of an ARM-based phone or tablet. To run Android-x86, you have two 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 the USB stick into the PC in question, reboot, and enter the boot menu (usually by pressing a key like F12 during the boot process). Alternatively, if you want to run Android-x86 along with your current operating system, you can download the disk image and run it in VirtualBox. The official site has some tips for getting Android-x86 up and running in a virtual machine as well.