How To Run Google Apps In Google Chrome
Did you know you can run Android Apps in your Google Chrome browser?. In 2015, Google launched a tool called ARC Welder, which is designed for developers to test their applications in Google Chrome so that the applications can be ported to Chrome OS.
ARC Welder’s main focus is to make it easy for developers to create more apps for Chrome OS, but Welder can be used to run more Android apps in Chrome.
It’s very easy to run Android apps in Chrome using ARC Welder, this post will show you how easy it is. You should note that not all apps can run smoothly on Chrome so you would have to test various apps and see what works best for you.
Installing ARC Welder
First of all, you need to install the ARC Welder application from the Chrome web store. After installation, you will be able to run ARC Welder from the Chrome apps page.
One thing about ARC Welder is, you can run it on all your devices that support Chrome and Chrome apps. All desktop operating systems are supported including, Windows 10, macOS, Chrome OS, and Linux.
From our tests, the tool runs well on all the operating system mentioned so you don’t need to switch to a particular OS before you can use.
Find Android APK’s
The ARC Welder is designed to run APK’s, so you will have to search, find, and download the preferred app you want to run. The restriction is, you can’t download the app from the Google Play store so you would have to use a third-party source for your downloads.
APK Mirror is a third-party site that hosts many android apps. I would recommend APK Mirror as your main APK download source because of its nice design and user-friendly features.
Older versions of many applications can be downloaded to run with ARC Welder if the current updates don’t work. Alternatively, AndroidAPKsFree can be used for APK downloads if what you search for on APK Mirror is not available.
Running The Apk In ARC Welder
After downloading your APK, launch ARC Welder from Chrome and choose a directory for ARC to write temporary files. After this, click to find and add the APK you want to run. This will bring you to a page of configuration options. Leave the options at the default settings.
Click ‘test’ to launch the app. Note that, ARC Welder can only run one app at a time. You will have to close the current app in the section before opening another.
We made some tests on a couple of apps and found out some apps worked perfectly while others crush indefinitely when launched. Some key Android apps like Gmail, Maps, and Facebook crash immediately whiles YouTube loads fine at startup but crushes later as it doesn’t have access to Google Play Services.
Instagram and Snapchat both don’t work at all. Other apps that worked perfectly with ARC Welder are Twitter, Speedtest.net, Accuweather, Slack, and others.
Games don’t work at all since ARC is not designed to run games in the Chrome browser. You can personally test different APKs and you will definitely find more apps that work perfectly for you.
Conclusion
Running apps in browsers have not been easy to come by. In this article, we looked at how you can run Android apps in Google Chrome. No need to install the apps on your Operating System, you can just run them straight in your browser.
