Run Android apps on Windows, OS X, and Linux with ARC Welder

Back in September 2014, Google launched the "App Runtime for Chrome" (ARC), a tool that allowed developers to test their Android apps on any Chrome OS device. Today, the Android creators took things one step further and announced the ARC Welder, a tool that makes it possible for developers to test Android apps on any machine that can run the Google Chrome browser. In short, the new ARC Welder tool makes it possible to run Android apps on any desktop operating system such as Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux.

Although ARC Welder is primarily aimed at developers, anyone can go ahead and test drive Android apps in their Chrome browser. Just three things are required: the Android APK for the app, the Chrome Browser, and the ARC Welder tool. Following a quick setup process, the APK is converted into an app that can run inside the Google Chrome browser.

Another thing to note is that Google also integrated support for some of the Google Play services, such as Maps, Location, or Google Cloud Messaging (GCM). Unfortunately, not all of Google's services are supported by the ARC Welder, meaning that some apps that depend on them will not work.

Google claims that the technology behind ARC Welder allows apps to run almost as smoothly on your desktop machine as they would on an Android smartphone or tablet. However, as most desktop computers lack touch-sensitive panels, as well as many of the sensors available on Android devices, don't expect the overall experience to be similar. At the moment, ARC is based on Android 4.4 KitKat. As a result, it runs the outdated Dalvik virtual machine, as opposed to Lollipop's faster Android Run Time (ART).