Did you lot know that y'all can run Android apps in Google Chrome? Dorsum in 2015, Google launched a tool called ARC Welder, which is designed to allow developers test their applications in the Chrome browser so they can exist ported to Chrome Os. ARC Welder'due south primary goal is to make information technology easy for developers to create more apps for Chrome OS, only the tool can be used by anyone to simply run Android apps in their browser.

It's pretty easy to run Android apps using the ARC Welder, and below we'll evidence you how. It's worth mentioning, yet, that some Android apps don't run particularly well in Chrome, and then you'll need to do a bit of experimentation to detect which apps work all-time.

Install ARC Welder

The easiest office of the whole procedure is installing ARC Welder. Simply head to the Chrome Web Store page for ARC Welder and click install. After the short installation process is complete, you'll be able to run ARC Welder from the Chrome apps page.

If you have a device that can run Chrome and Chrome apps, you should exist able to use the ARC Welder. This means that all desktop operating systems are supported, including Windows ten, macOS, Chrome OS, and Linux. From what we've seen, the tool works similarly well beyond all operating systems, so yous won't necessarily get a better experience switching from Windows to MacOS (for instance).

ARC Welder is designed for Chrome Bone, though, and the tool does warn you that some "platform specific bugs" exist on other operating systems.

Find Android APKs

ARC Welder is designed to open up Android APK files, so you lot'll have to find and download the APK you want to run. You can't download APK files from the Google Play Shop, so yous'll take to employ a third-party download source.

Hither on TechSpot we host many APKs of popular apps, but for more obscure apps and discovery we recommend APKMirror every bit your Android APK source, primarily considering it has a nice interface and you tin can download older versions of practically every app in their drove if necessary. They even have split versions of many apps for different processor architectures. AndroidAPKsFree is another reasonable source if you tin't detect what yous're looking for at APKMirror.

Neither website has paid apps, because downloading APKs for paid apps is piracy. If you really want to download a paid app to utilise with ARC Welder, you'll have to look into that yourself.

Run Them in ARC Welder

When you have your APK ready, merely launch ARC Welder in Chrome, and choose a directory where ARC Welder can write some temporary files. Later on you've done this, click to detect and add together the APK you want to try, which will bring you to a page of configuration options. Google says it's best to leave these at their default values. To launch the app, click 'test'.

ARC Welder can only run i app at a time. If yous want to open up a different app, you'll need to close the app currently in apply, load a new APK, click to remove the old APK from ARC Welder, and then launch the new app.

We tried a number of apps in ARC Welder in Chrome 56 on Windows ten, and found that app support is hitting or miss. Some key Android apps like Gmail, Maps and Facebook crash immediately afterwards they load, while others like Keep and Microsoft Give-and-take hang indefinitely on their load screen. YouTube loads only throws up an error as it doesn't have admission to Google Play Services. Instagram doesn't work, and neither does Snapchat. Merely there's good news! We did find some apps that did work from our brief test period:

  • Twitter loads and operates perfectly. Animations are a bit slow, every bit you'd expect from emulation software, but the experience is decent plenty.
  • Plex also seems to work. We could play videos in the app with minor audio distortions.
  • AccuWeather had some flickering issues at times just did load.
  • SpeedTest.net works if you lot want to do some network performance testing
  • Slack works fine

This is Twitter running in ARC Welder in Chrome

Most games we tested did not work, or loaded to a blackness screen. This isn't hugely surprising, as ARC Welder isn't congenital to handle complex 3D workloads. An old game like Temple Run does load, but it renders at nearly 3 frames per 2d and y'all tin't make information technology past the menu screen anyway.

Only ARC Welder isn't really designed to run Android games in your browser. Instead, it's a tool primarily targeting app developers wanting to port their apps to Chrome Os, which is why non-game apps are much more probable to load and function correctly. Of all the apps nosotros tested, roughly forty percent of them loaded and worked in ARC Welder.

Information technology tin exist useful to effort Android apps in Chrome if you don't have an Android device handy, merely it's far from a perfect Android app emulator. If ARC Welder works with the app you want to exam, that'due south fantastic, merely you shouldn't expect every app to load or function as intended in this developer-focused tool.

5 days, 5 killer tech tips is a TechSpot monthly feature

On the third week of every month, nosotros'll publish v killer tech tips, 1 for each mean solar day of the week for a given app, service, or platform.

This week we are covering not bad tips and tricks for the Google Chrome browser.

  • Twenty-four hours 1: Customizing Chrome's New Tab folio
  • Twenty-four hours ii: 5 Great Chrome Extensions Y'all Should Install + Using Chrome Remote Desktop
  • Twenty-four hour period 3: Five Experimental Chrome Settings Worth Enabling
  • Day 4: Chrome Tab Management Tips and Extensions
  • Twenty-four hour period five: How to Run Android Apps in Google Chrome