How to run android apps on PC

Have your liked an android game so much that you wanted to play on bigger screen and with better hardware, capable of running any high graphics android game? I don’t know about you but i felt the same when i first played asphalt 8. 

So i started finding out if there is any way i can play games and run any i wanted. This world is full of genius people who makes anything possible for us. The softwares used to run android app are called Android emulator. What it does is, it creates a similar environment of phones on our PC. 

There are many android emulators for PC and mac as well and believe me you will love playing Asphalt 8- Airborne on PC! Combat games are a bit tough to play on phones because of all touch controls but in android emulator it will feel like pc game with customized controls. These emulators enable you to run android apps on PC without any restriction just like your phone or may be better than your phone.

We have two most popular android emulators for pc. Both these softwares support windows as well as mac.

• Nox app player
• Bluestack

How to run android apps on PC

We are using Nox app player as it is a bit more user friendly. Download the Nox app player from here (~285mb).

Once downloaded, install the software and open the software. You will see your home screen with some apps and google play store in it. Click on Playstore, it will ask you to sign in. Sign in using your Gmail account to access Playstore. Now you will see the Playstore interface like the one you see on your phones.

Install any app you want run or game to play. After installation an icon will be created on your home screen. Launch the app have fun.

For playing games you need to learn some functionalities of the Nox player. Launch your game, locate the keyboard control from the sidebar and click on it. This open some control setting on just below top bar.

Now we have three types of games; swipe (subway surfer, temple run etc.), tilt/left-right (racing games) and direction control games (combat/action games).

For swipe games:

• Click on “A”, now click and hold your mouse to draw a line towards the direction you want to swipe. Now release the mouse and the assign the key to the box appears at the end of line. Eg: for left swipe, draw the line from right to left and assign the key.
• Save the settings.

For racing games (tilt/gravity control based):

• Click on the “steering” icon. Now assign keys to your tilt direction i.e. you can assign left arrow for left and right arrow for right turn.
• Save the settings.

For combat games:

• Click on the direction controller button and assign keys according to your ease (for left/right/forward/backward movements).
• Click on “A”. Now click on game controls and assign the keys accordingly (see image) and save the settings.

Nox player is not only limited to playing games. You can run any app you want. I prefer Nox player not just for playing games but also to use hacking apps for educational and research purpose. This makes sure that i don’t mess my phone data with any corrupted app or misuse of any app. 

Also Read – Top hacking apps for android

There are many settings in the emulator just play around it and you will find everything. Most of the settings are user interface based and also hardware based like performance can be set to low, mid, high and even be customized. Number of cores you want to give to Nox player etc.

It would hardly take 20 min to learn every setting. That’s it, so this was all about how to run Android apps on PC. Enjoy!