Or the app may be very large and so will eat up your device’s space and maybe your Internet quota. To walk around this, you’d want to download and run the app on your PC. You may also transfer it to your smartphone or tablet via a cheaper Wi-Fi connection, a USB cable, or Bluetooth. Or you simply might not own an Android device, or it may be broken, and you need to use that particular app. In this case, you will be using an Android emulator app to run the app on your desktop computer. See below for the detailed steps. In all of these cases, you will be either downloading the app/game as an APK package or installing it via a third-party app.
Install Android Apps on Computer
Warning: Note that downloading apps or games from 3rd-party sources, not checked nor supported officially by Google, especially downloading pirated paid apps, might be unsafe and they might contain malware. In no way, do we recommend installing third-party APKs, and you do this at your own risk. So let’s get into the detailed steps.
1. Install APKs
In order to download an app on your computer, you need to find an Android package file, also known as an APK, which is the way Android apps are distributed and installed. You should only download APK files from trusted developers and companies. In order to run APK files on your computer, you need an emulator – more on them below. First, you need to find an APK for your app. Searching APKs on the web A couple of quick tips for finding an APK. Use Google (or another search engine): If you can’t find the app’s latest version, find the closest one possible. If no luck, use a different website from Google results. Alternatively, APKs of most free apps can be found on 3rd-party app marketplaces. Popular choices are: Once you downloaded the APK file of the app on your computer, install it using an emulator (see below) or you may want to transfer it to your Android device to install it. When transferred, simply locate and click the file, and the installation should begin shortly.
2. Using an emulator
In case you wish to install the app or game on a Windows-based desktop, then you may have to install an Android emulator that will create the Android environment on your PC or Mac. Before installing an emulator on your machine, make sure it meets required the emulator specifications like processor speed and RAM. Here’s the list of some of the most popular Android emulators for PC.
Getting up and running with emulators is pretty simple. First, download and install the utility; second, you’re ready to run Android apps. To install an app or game using an emulator: That’s all there is to it. No configuration, and no hassling about. You will have a 100 percent native Android operating system running on your Windows PC or tablet. We recommend choosing an emulator that uses virtualization technology as opposed to a dual-boot solution, o that you can switch between Windows and Android apps seamlessly without having to log out of one OS to log in to the other.
