Your Library page shows every single individual app or game you’ve ever installed or purchased on your device, and you can install each of them by clicking on the Install button next to each app. Enter the list, then click on “Library” at the top of this page to navigate away from the sparse “Updates” page.
To install from your pre-established library of Android apps, you’ll need to click “My Apps and Games” at the top of the list. Since you previously logged into Google Play when first launching the app, you’ll see your standard number of options appear inside BlueStacks’ terminal, including your account name, your library of apps and games, and the ability to browse suggested categories like books, movies, and more.
Use your mouse to select the horizontal triple-lined menu button that will be familiar to any long-time Android user to open the sliding menu to the left of your screen. More importantly, however, is the ability to access your own account. You can search through apps at the top of the browser, select one of the options from the carousel of highlighted apps and games at the top of the screen, and scroll through the suggested games below. If you’ve ever used Google Play on a tablet, you’ll know what to expect here the app is identical. Unlike the BlueStacks App Store, Google Play is entirely unchanged here. When you enter your login information for Google Play, you’ll be redirected back to the app, now able to install apps and launch content from within the store. We’ll cover all that below, once BlueStacks is set up on your computer.
That’s BlueStacks, now in its fourth version, a fully-featured Android emulator designed to run your games just as you would run typical PC games through Steam or other gaming clients, like Origin or .īlueStacks includes a full app software store, the ability to add friends to your list to play with, and even a social network called Pika World where you can connect with other BlueStacks players around you.
There’s a number of Android emulators on the market today for Mac OS, including the Android emulator created by Google to help developers create and publish their apps, but when it comes to gaming, there’s really only one option available to use today. It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking to play a game on your PC originally purchased on Android, or if you’d rather spend your time using Snapchat on your computer instead of your phone, emulation is the way that you can force all of your favorite Android apps to automatically start functioning on your Mac. If we refer to the speed at which they are executed, be aware that since the commands require an emulation environment, games with a lot of code involved will not behave as nimbly as they do on your mobile.Whatever the reason, there’s an easy way to install Android apps on Mac OS: emulation. The installation is quite simple but be aware that all the ones we tested have a slight delay when downloading. This does not mean that there are emulators that install bloatware and other junk files. You should know that there are some very decent free options out there. PriceĪt this point, you don’t need to pay for an Android emulator. A quick glance will help you find the best choice. There are a number of basic principles to consider before choosing a good Android emulator for Mac computers. So it seems clear that NoxPlayer is ahead in terms of performance, and Genymotion it is beyond the possibilities of both, always keeping in mind that this is a professional solution for developers and not so much for the end consumer. In fact, an app like Fruit Ninja reported issues with its installation and we were unable to launch it.
It performed well, but we did experience an occasional slowdown in the computer we installed it on (MacBook Pro 2015). As we expected, There are three plans to choose from. Performance is fast, and you can connect a physical device to your Mac to use it as a remote control for apps you might be testing in Genymotion.
This makes the startup wait times a bit longer, given the customization.Īnother advantage we have seen over using NoxPlayer is that at the time of this article’s publication, Genymotion supports Android 8.0 Oreo instead of being stuck in time with very old versions. When you open the Genymotion, it will ask you to add a virtual device as well as the version of Android you want to run. It also has different widgets such as camera, GPS or Wi-Fi network with which you can see how a project or application reacts to the interaction it has to perform with the programmed functionality. So it’s a great option for developers who want to put their projects to the test. With a little more professional tint, Genymotion guarantees an Android emulator for desktops with different screen sizes and Android versions.