Run Android Apps On Mac

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Android emulator on mac

What do you do if you needed to run an Android app and in your possession is only a Mac computer? You have come to the right place. Read on and find out how you can run Android apps on Mac OS.

Apr 23, 2018 To run Android apps on top of Mac OS, we need to set up an emulator. An emulator in layman terms is a piece of software that allows one computer system (the host) to behave line another computer system (the guest). In this instance, out host is a computer running any version of Mac OS and the emulator will enable us to run Android apps on top. Android is an open platform indeed, therefore it is possible to be developed by third parties for certain purpose, including development on how to run Android on Mac. The idea of this technology is an emulator where Android can run on OS desktop platform including OS X. We’ve chosen BlueStacks App Player for an emulator Android developer for Mac. BlueStacks 2 is a free Android emulator that runs on macOS and Windows, so no matter what kind of personal computer you have, you can try out Android apps. To run Android apps (.apk files) on your Mac: Download the BlueStacks 2 app. Find the BlueStacks 2.dmg (disk image) file and double-click it to begin the install. Mar 25, 2017 Chrome apps are also no longer officially supported outside of Chrome OS. However, you can still download them. ARC Welder is an old app that runs in the Chrome browser on a Mac that enables you to run Android apps within.

Emulator

To run Android apps on top of Mac OS, we need to set up an emulator. An emulator in layman terms is a piece of software that allows one computer system (the host) to behave line another computer system (the guest). In this instance, out host is a computer running any version of Mac OS and the emulator will enable us to run Android apps on top of this.

We can use the popular emulators like virtual box, bluestacks or Andy. In this article, I will show you how to use Andy – your desktop mobile.

Andy

The first thing that you need to do is go to the Andy website, and find the download section, which is the 5th option on the Menu.

Clicking on the download will start the download of the Andy launch file which is about 1.4 MB so it will be pretty fast to download. Once the download is finished, launch the downloaded .dmg file.

Installer

And then agree to the terms and conditions, then the Andy installation will start on your system. It might ask you for confirmation to open it as it was downloaded from the internet.

Run Android Apps On Mac

Click open and enter your System password to install.

Password Prompt

If your password authenticates, you will see the following screen where you just have to click continue.

After you click continue, it will start the big download of the entire application. The size of this download is approximately 505 MB.

Downloading the full Emulator

When the download is done, it will continue with the installation and may give you an offer. In my case, it asked to install Booking.com and I skipped it. You may accept or skip the offer as it doesn’t affect the installation.

When the installation is complete, it will show the confirmation that you have successfully installed Andy.

Installation Successful

Just click finish and it will close the installation.

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After installation completes, a “Thank You for Downloading” page will open from the Andy website. It will usually just show you some features or tips to using Andy.

You can now start the Andy Emulator just like any other program on your computer.

Running Apps

Run Android Apps On Macbook

There are two ways to run apps on the Andy emulator. The first one is to search and download it from the Google PlayStore. The second way is to load an .apk file and then install it within Andy. This is the method I will be showing as it is a bit more complicated but allows you to run apps not yet on the PlayStore.

Loading an .apk file

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  1. Get the .apk file you want ready, i.e. download it or have it in a location you can find it.
  2. Go to your Documents file and look for the folder named Andy
  3. Inside that folder, create a folder called “Shared”
  4. Copy your .apk file into the newly created Shared folder
  5. Go back to the Andy Emulator
  6. Launch the ES File Explorer
  7. Expand the Local option on the left side
  8. Click on Device
  9. Go to sdcard > Shared > Andy > Shared and you should see the .apk file you put in there
  10. Double click it to install it

For a video walkthrough of the above process, please watch the following YouTube video from NKT Studios:

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