If given the chance, I’m sure most of you would love to run your favorite Android apps on your personal Windows PC. Well, there is always a way to do that, but it requires installing the entire Android SDK on top of programming tools like Eclipse or NetBeans. It used to be a complicated process, believe me. Not anymore though.
Recently, Google launched a developer tool called ARC Welder for Chrome that can run and test Android apps directly on the Chrome browser. Besides PC, the ARC Welder app also works on Chromebooks, and so you can run Android apps on your Chromebook.
All you need is the APK file of the app you want to run.
Get started: Get the APK file
An app’s APK file can be obtained from one of many online mirrors. Just search for the app with the keyword ‘Download APK’ and you will see a lot of mirrors that allow you to download the APK file directly to your computer. Alternatively, you can use apps like ES File Explorer to transfer APKs of installed apps to your computer, and then test them with the ARC Tool.
So, in this article, I will show you how to install and configure the ARC Welder tool to test your application easily.
Run the application on ARC Welder
Once you have the APK file of the app you want to test on your computer, open the Chrome App Store and download the ARC Solder Tool. It may take some time to download and install the application as some additional files will be downloaded to resolve dependency issues. But don’t worry, everything will be done automatically by the installer and once installed, the ARC icon will appear in the Chrome App Drawer.
After you open the application, it will ask you to choose a folder on your computer. This folder will be used by the tool to save APK files while they are loaded into memory. Once that’s done, the app will ask you to import the APK file into the tool. Click the plus sign and enter any APK you have downloaded to your computer.
ARC will ask how you want to launch the application. Choose the direction that you think will work best for the application. Like if you’re launching Facebook or Candy Crush Saga, portrait mode would be the ideal choice.
The next thing you should choose is whether you want to launch the app in tablet mode or mobile mode and finally, choose whether you need clipboard access. With clipboard access, you’ll be able to enter text in the app using your keyboard.
Finally, when everything is ready, click Run the program and the ARC Tool will run the app in a new Chrome window. Now you can interact with the app and work on it just like the app is running on Android.
Some points to remember
Here are some points you must keep in mind when using the ARC Welder tool.
- This tool can only run one app at a time, and when you load the second app, the first one will be removed from memory.
- You cannot run applications that require Android services. Like the YouTube app, it requires Play Services to sign you in – it won’t work in your Chrome browser because you won’t be able to access your account.
- You can play games on these apps, but make sure that progress data is saved online in your account. Any locally saved data will be deleted every time you disconnect the app.
Keep these points in mind while testing the application on the ARC engine. I was able to run ES File Explorer, Candy Crush Saga and Brain Wars. However, Spotify never launched and got stuck on a white screen. As a result, this tool may not work with every app and you may have to wait for the next version update.
Conclusion
That’s pretty much everything about the ARC Welder tool and how you can use it to test Android apps directly on your computer without installing heavy Android SDKs. The tool also works on Chromebooks without any issues. So try it out today.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
