can android apps be downloaded in cloud ready How to run Android apps on any laptop or desktop. Android has a large, vibrant ecosystem of applications. From Heartstone to Plex to Twitter, Google Play is home to over 1.5 million mobile apps, according to AppBrain. Wouldn't it be great to run all these apps on your computer, too? Now you can, thanks to Android Runtime for Chrome. What is Android Runtime for Chrome? Simply put, Android Runtime for Chrome (or ARC, for short) is a software package that lets users run Android apps inside their web browsers. Google announced ARC last summer, and initially designed it with Chromebooks in mind. The idea was to bring popular Android apps to Chrome OS, which is still largely limited to running web apps. And while many popular services, like Instagram, have Android apps, not everyone offers a full-featured web-app equivalent. This fact alone made ARC a potential boon for Chromebook owners. Then earlier this month, Google released an update to ARC, which lets users run Android apps within the Chrome browser on OS X, Linux and Windows as well. By some measure, using ARC is a little like running a Java app in a browser in that it's a virtual environment that lets users run a certain class of apps across multiple platforms. As it turns out, Java is the programming language of choice for Android app development. For now, ARC is still in beta, so you may encounter bugs and some apps may not work properly. While the current release is primarily for Android developers to test their apps and see how well they run, any daring soul can download ARC and try it out for themselves. How to get Android Runtime for Chrome. All you need to run ARC on your computer is the latest version of Google Chrome. If you're using a Chromebook, Google recommends using the latest "stable channel" (non-beta) build. From there, you can get the necessary ARC Welder add-on for Chrome via Google's Chrome Web Store, and installing it takes only a couple of clicks. The download itself isn't that big, either: it's a shade under 12MB. Running apps. Once ARC Welder is finished installing, it's almost ready to run Android apps (called APKs) from your computer. Getting the APKs is the hard part, particularly if you aren't a developer and don't have any apps of your own making to try. You can't readily download APKs from the Google Play Store directly to your PC, so you'll have to hunt down APKs using other means. APK mirror sites are one option, but that route is a risky proposition rife with potential security issues and other pitfalls. Instead, your best bet may be to try extracting apps installed on your phone and then copying them over to your computer. Various options exist on Google Play; just do a search for "APK extractor." Many APK extractor apps are free, so you can try a few before you settle on one you like. We used the aptly named APK Extractor from Meher for our own testing and liked it. You'll also need a way to get the APK off your phone and onto your computer, and you can do this either over a USB connection or via a cloud storage service like Dropbox. If you're on a Mac and choose to go the USB route, you can use the free Android File Transfer app to access files stored on your device. However, depending on where your extractor app stored the APK, you may not be able to get to it this way. Instead, you may need to download a file manager app like Astro to locate the extracted APK. Once you locate the APK, you can transfer it to your computer via email or via Dropbox or other cloud storage service. Now that you have an APK to try, launch ARC Welder from Chrome's in-browser app picker, or through the Chrome App Launcher that appears in the OS X dock, Linux dock or the Windows taskbar. The first time you open ARC Welder, it'll ask you to pick a folder for it to store files. Once you do that, you're ready to rock. Click Add your APK and find the APK you saved to your computer. Select it, then press Open. ARC Welder will ask how you want to run the app (in portrait or landscape mode, in tablet or phone mode, etc.). Select the options you want, then click Launch App. How To Run Google Chrome OS From Your USB Drive [MiniTool News] Though the chrome OS is designed by Google for PC, it is not only available on desktop; actually, you can run the Google chrome OS in other ways, such as from a USB drive. The following content will tell you how to run the OS from external drive and how to distinguish if this OS is right for you. As an operating system designed by Google, the Chrome OS is produced on the basis of Linux kernel. The Google Chrome web browser is used as the main user interface in Chrome OS. Announced in July 2009, the Google Chrome OS is mainly used to support and run web applications. All in all, Google Chromebook is not the only way to work on Google OS. In the next part of this article, I’ll walk you through the way to run Google’s desktop OS with the help of a USB drive. And after that, I’ll show you how to determine whether the Chrome OS is suitable for you. Run Google Chrome OS from A USB Drive. Things you need to prepare: A fully-functional computer system A USB drive with a capacity of more than 4GB A zipped-file extractor (7-Zip for Windows, Keka for Mac OS, p7zip for Linux) An imaging burning program (Etcher or other options) 7 Steps to Run Google’s Desktop Operating System from a USB. Download the latest Chromium OS image. Extract the zipped image file you’ve downloaded. Connect a USB drive to computer and format it to FAT32. Get an image burning program for Chrome OS installation. Use the software to install OS image on the USB drive. Restart computer to enter BIOS and select the boot device. Boot into Chrome OS through USB drive. Step 1: Download Chrome OS to USB. To run Chrome OS from USB, you need to download the system to your USB drive first. Please download the latest OS image from an alternate source (Arnold The Bat is a good choice). since Google doesn’t offer any official Chromium OS build. Step 2: Extract Chrome OS. The downloaded OS image file will be kept in zipped format, so you need to extract the file with a zipped-file extractor you have prepared. After that, you can use it. Step 3: Format USB to FAT32. Please plug in your USB drive to the computer and then format it as FAT32 in Windows: open File Explorer -> right click on your USB drive -> select Format -> choose FAT32 as the file system -> click Start . Various solutions are provided for you to fix USB flash drive not recognized error and recover data from the not showing up/not working USB device. For Mac users, the built-in Disk Utility is able to help them format the USB drive as FAT32. However, if you find it is labeled as “MS-DOS FAT” in Mac, it’s the same thing; please don’t worry. Step 4: Prepare an Image Burning Program. You need to get an image burning program for Chrome OS installation. There are plenty of such tools, Etcher is a good choice for its good compatibility; it works the same way on Windows, Mac and Linux. Step 5: Install the Chrome OS Image. Please start to install the OS image you’ve got in step 1 to the formatted external USB drive with the help of the image burning software you prepare. Step 6: Change Boot Order. Please restart your computer and press corresponding key to enter BIOS. Then, you’ll need to select the USB drive with OS image as the first boot device. After that, exit and save changes. Step 7: Boot Chrome OS from USB. Please let the computer start automatically. Now, you’re able to enter the Chrome OS and experience all the glory of it promptly. This method is suitable for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux users. And it doesn’t require you to overwrite your current OS. How to Decide If Chrome OS Is Right for You. Before getting moving to install Chrome OS, you should ask yourself 4 questions to figure out if it is a good choice for you. Are you used to spending much of your time using the web and web-centric services? Can web-centric (and/or Android app) equivalents do most of the things you need to do on a computer? Is there any specific local program that you must need? Can you live only in the Chrome browser on your computer for a week or a longer time? If the answers to above questions are respectively: yes, yes, no, and yes, the Chrome OS may be right for you. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Reddit. ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Position: Columnist. Sarah is working as editor at MiniTool since she was graduated from university, having rich writing experiences. Love to help other people out from computer problems, disk issues, and data loss dilemma and specialize in these things.