Google has begun bringing Android apps to the Chrome Web Store, allowing you to run a handful of Android apps on a Chromebook or Chromebox. But as we’ve reported, it’s already possible to run some Android apps that aren’t available in the Chrome web store… it just takes a little work to prepare and load those apps.
Now the developer who figured out how to load some unsupported Android apps on a Chromebook has figured out how to do it with Windows, OS X, and Linux computers as well.
The ARChon custom runtime is a modified version of Google’s Android Runtime for Chrome. It allows you to run multiple side-loaded Android apps at once… and in addition to working on Chrome OS devices it works on Windows, OS X, and Linux computers running the Google Chrome 37 or later web browser.
You still need to prepare Android apps manually before you can load them, and the modified runtime may be unstable when used on a system that’s not running Chrome OS. But it provides a way to run Android apps as if they were native apps on a Windows, OS X, or Linux computer without installing an emulator or virtual machine.
More details are available at developer vladikoff’s github pages for the ChromeOS-APK and ARChon Custom Runtime projects.
Not every Android app will work with the ChromeOS-APK side-loading method. Most paid apps won’t run properly and some other apps crash if they rely on frameworks or other components that aren’t available. But you can find many apps that do work (and APK files for many free apps which have already been prepared to run on Chrome) at the new ChromeAPKs subreddit. Note that it’s probably a good idea to prepare your own APK files though… installing apps from random links posted on the internet isn’t always a good idea.
via OMG Chrome
I really would like MS to allow its users to run apps via Windows OS. Until then, I will continue using to Bluestacks App Player for playing some of the Android games, I like.
If it does skype, my chromebook is complete
Cool, will try this out. If anyone wonders on the “prepare your own APK files” part, a convenient way is to use App Backup & Restore ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.infolife.appbackup ) or some similar tool (have use that and another one I can’t remember the name for) to backup selected apk files on your phone to your gmail as attachments. Easy to save to the computer from there.
You can also use ES Explorer. It has an app backup function.
There is literally ONE app I desperately want to run on my Windows products and I’d never turn on an Android device again. If I can do it without some clunky business model like Bluestacks employs that would be awesome. Of course it’d be more awesome if I could get the same app natively for Windows machines but who knows when that’ll be.
I would like it if Google made it so that Chrome could officially run Android apps like ChromeOS. Though I guess if they did that and it worked well I wouldn’t buy another Android device… However, if they did then I would probably use Chrome a lot more and download more Android apps.