While you can technically run Android apps in Chrome OS, you're currently limited to one of four apps. This is necessary to run Android apps in Windows, OS X, and Linux. To begin, we'll need to download the ARChon Custom Runtime. So instead of a Genymotion-like situation where you have a whole Android phone running on your computer, here you can launch Android apps from the Chrome launcher. In layman's terms, Chrome OS is using the same type of engine that Android uses to run software directly. This means that it's not an emulator or virtualization stack, but a proper runtime. Step One: Install the ARChon RuntimeĬhrome OS uses a specialized runtime that allows Android apps to run natively inside it.

They function the same as extensions, but are not wrapped up in a single file. These are folders that contain all the files for an extension (or, in this case, Android APK). For the purposes of Android apps, we're going to use unpacked extensions. Unpacked Extension: Extensions normally come from the Chrome Web Store or prepackaged in a.

Last week, Google rolled out a new version of Android to very little fanfare and quite a lot of… Read more Why Google Play Services Are Now More Important Than Android By making a modified version of the Android runtime for Chrome, Google can allow developers to add support for Chrome without rebuilding their apps from the ground up. In the same way that ART (and the older Dalvik) currently run Android apps in Android itself. This process is pretty new, so to make things simple, we'll define a few terms first:ĪRC: The App Runtime for Chrome (or ARC) is the piece of software that allows Android apps to run in Chrome. You will need Chrome 37+ for the following guide. This process is the opposite of both those things. This is probably not something you should attempt on a work computer, nor should you expect this to be simple or bug-free. In addition to apps that are in no way officially supported, you're also going to be messing around with low-level stuff in Chrome. Obvious Disclaimer: This is still eight million kinds of broken and absolutely nothing here comes with a guarantee. The First Android Apps Are Now Available for Chrome OSĪt Google I/O, the company announced that soon you would be able to run Android apps in Chrome OS.… Read more

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