Well, the gap between desktop and mobile is actually closing all the time. However, while this means we are getting more and more desktop-class apps on our devices, getting mobile apps on our desktops is as hard as ever. Unless you guys use a Chromebook. But what if you use a Mac actually? It is possible to run Android apps on macOS as well. You guys will need some third-party software, and you will have to be willing in order to spend a few moments setting it up. When you do it, you guys will even have access to the Google Play Store. In this article, we are going to talk about How to Use Android Apps on Mac – Emulators. Let’s begin!

• Android On Mac
• Machine Learning For Android App Development Using Ml Kit
• Android App Development Virtual Machine

How to Use Android Apps on Mac – Emulators

Modern, performant mobile apps with.NET and C#. Use.NET and C# to create native apps for the billions of Android, iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Windows devices around the world. Add to that sharing code with any.NET app, empowering you to be more productive and build apps faster than ever across all platforms. This article explains how to debug a Xamarin.Android application on a physical Android device. It is possible to debug a Xamarin.Android app on an Android device using either Visual Studio for Mac or Visual Studio. Before debugging can occur on a device, it must be setup for development and connected to your PC or Mac. Debug Application.

BlueStacks

Pros

• BlueStacks is really easy to set up
• It does not involve long installation processes
• Performance is optimized for apps

Cons

• Not much suitable for games or development

Bluestacks is actually the most mainstream of all Android emulators. There are many reasons for that. For starters, it’s compatible along with Windows and Mac. It was also one of the first that worked really well that still gets regular updates as well. The emulator basically targets mobile gamers. There is a stigma along with Bluestacks as it can feel a little bloated at times. Bluestacks 4 (launched in 2018) aimed in order to fix that with mixed results.

It also includes key-mapping and settings for most of the games installed. That should help make things much easier too. It’s is actually one of the heaviest emulators on the list. But, it also has the most features for better or for worse as well. Bluestacks also made the MSI App Player too, another excellent emulator that some belief works better than vanilla Bluestacks. You guys can also try either one, they are both by Bluestacks.

We actually think BlueStacks is the best option for those who need to use Android apps on Mac. It works really fine whenever it comes to running apps such as WhatsApp and Instagram. However, the gaming performance is okay, we believe there are better options as well.

Download – Bluestacks

VirtualBox

Pros

• Offers more control over the virtual Android device
• You guys can run the latest version of Android
• It offers a fully-fledged Android OS experience

Cons

• Installation is somewhat complex
• Lacks performance optimization or customization options
• Chances of bugs

Well, at the core, Android is also a Linux-based operating system. As it happens, you guys can install Android on Mac using a tool such as VirtualBox. In order to do this, you guys have to create a virtual machine and install Android in it. Compared to the other options that we’ve listed, this VirtualBox method offers better control over the Android device and the apps you want to install.

When you install that, VirtualBox provides you a pure Android experience. This is because we are installing the basic Android Operating System on the virtual machine actually. But, you should not expect an optimized environment to run apps or games. Well, chances are, there are some bugs too. On the bright side, you guys can also deploy Android v8 Oreo in the virtual machine.

Running Android on Mac via the VirtualBox is best when you need better control over the process. As a virtual machine, you guys can customize performance too. But, in the long run, you will have to compromise the overall performance and gaming controls as well.

Download – VirtualBox

Nox | android apps on mac

Pros

• Easy to set up and get started
• Optimized performance for games and apps
• Advanced features such as keyboard mapping and location manipulation

Cons

• Not suitable for development
• Runs on Android KitKat
• Ships with some bloatware

Nox is another Android emulator for PC for gamers actually. That includes the usual stuff like key-mapping along with your keyboard, actual controller support, and even the ability to key-map gesture controls. For instance, you can assign the function in order to swipe right to an arrow key. And you can use that in a game without even actual hardware controller support. It is a lot of fun and seems to work rather well most of the time actually. It’s also entirely free and in active development as well. Well, the demo video below is rather old and it definitely ran better than that on my laptop.

Nox Player Mac is the best option if you guys are into high-end Android games. Even if you have a mid-end MacBook Air, it should offer the best performance as well. Also, thanks to the macro and mapping feature too. We’d also recommend the tool in order to run WhatsApp and all.

Download – Nox

Genymotion | android apps on mac

Pros

• Awesome features for developers
• Multiple Android configurations
• Better Control over Running Apps

Cons

• Performance Optimization could be better

This Android emulator is mostly for the developers. It also lets you test your apps on a variety of devices without owning them as well. You can configure the emulator for a variety of devices with many versions of Android in order to help suit your needs. For instance, you guys can run a Nexus One with Android 4.2 or a Nexus 6 along with Android 6.0. You guys can easily switch between virtual devices at will. It Is not actually great for consumer uses, but, Genymotion does offer their services for free for personal use as well. It’s actually most useful feature is its availability on both of your desktop computer and the cloud as well. Those without powerful computers can make Genymotion’s servers do all of the work for them.

Genymotion is the best solution for Android developers who want to run their Android apps on a number of virtual devices. It syncs so well with your coding process and customization needs. Thanks to the plug-in, you guys can integrate this program along with Android Studio as well.

Download – Genymotion

Andy

Pros

• Easy to Install and Manage
• Best optimization for apps
• Offers a standard Android experience

Cons

• Runs on KitKat
• It is lagging a bit when other apps are running

Last but not the least, Andy is actually another way to run Android apps on Mac. But, if we compare to all of the emulators we have listed above, Andy offers a smoother workflow actually. The best part is that you guys are getting a 100% full Android experience whenever you startup. You get built-in apps such as Gmail, ES File Explorer, and a lot more than that. It’s running on Android v4.0 KitKat, though actually.

Because Andy comes along with Play Store access, you guys can easily download and install apps. There are some other necessary features as well. For instance, you guys can run the Android emulator in vertical and landscape modes as well. Also, there’s Key Mapping and Location manipulation. These features are awesome whenever you want a more optimized way in order to run Android apps actually.

Andy has one of the easiest installers that we have seen. It is actually an online installer, that would download files over an Internet connection as well. It needs to be noted that Andy downloads almost 500MB of files, the largest on the list. When you do the install, Andy will then show you the standard Android interface. You can use the mouse and keyboard to manage the virtual Android tablet actually.

Andy also offers the perfect level of optimization and also a standard Android experience too. We’d recommend this tool if you guys need a real-like virtual Android device on your Mac. Of course, there are some performance lags however, you can avoid it through avoiding multitasking actually.

Download – Andy

Conclusion

Alright, That was all Folks! I hope you guys like this “android apps on mac” article and also find it helpful to you. Give us your feedback on it. Also if you guys have further queries and issues related to this article. Then let us know in the comments section below. We will get back to you shortly.

Have a Great Day!

Also See: Best Web Browser for Android TV – You Can Use

How fast does your MacBook need to be to comfortably code iOS apps with Xcode? Is a MacBook Pro from 2-3 years ago good enough to learn Swift programming? Let’s find out!

Here’s what we’ll get into:

• The minimum/recommended system requirements for Xcode 11
• Why you need – or don’t need – a fancy $3.000 MacBook Pro
• Which second-hand Macs can run Xcode OK, and how you can find out

I’ve answered a lot of “Is my MacBook good enough for iOS development and/or Xcode?”-type questions on Quora. A few of the most popular models include:

• The 3rd- and 4th-gen MacBook Pro, with 2.4+ GHz Intel Core i5, i7, i9 CPUs
• The 2nd-gen MacBook Air, with the 1.4+ GHz Intel Core i5 CPUs
• The 4th-generation iMac, with the 2.7+ GHz Intel Core i5 and i7 CPUs

These models aren’t the latest, that’s for sure. Are they good enough to code iOS apps? And what about learning how to code? We’ll find out in this article.

My Almost-Unbreakable 2013 MacBook Air

Since 2009 I’ve coded more than 50 apps for iOS, Android and the mobile web. Most of those apps, including all apps I’ve created between 2013 and 2018, were built on a 13″ MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM and a 1.3 GHz Intel i5 CPU.

My first MacBook was the gorgeous, then-new MacBook White unibody (2009), which I traded in for a faster but heavier MacBook Pro (2011), which I traded in for that nimble workhorse, the mighty MacBook Air (2013). In 2018 I upgraded to a tricked out 13″ MacBook Pro, with much better specs.

Frankly, that MacBook Air from 2013 felt more sturdy and capable than my current MacBook Pro. After 5 years of daily intenstive use, the MacBook Air’s battery is only through 50% of its max. cycle count. It’s still going strong after 7 hours on battery power.

In 2014, my trusty MacBook Air broke down on a beach in Thailand, 3 hours before a client deadline, with the next Apple Store 500 kilometer away. It turned out OK, of course. Guess what? My current MacBook Pro from 2018, its keyboard doesn’t even work OK, I’ve had sound recording glitches, and occasionally the T2 causes a kernel panic. Like many of us, I wish we had 2013-2015 MacBook Air’s and Pro’s with today’s specs. Oh, well…

Learn how to build iOS apps

Get started with iOS 14 and Swift 5

Sign up for my iOS development course, and learn how to build great iOS 14 apps with Swift 5 and Xcode 12.

That 100 Mhz i486 PC I Learned to Code With

When I was about 11 years old I taught myself to code in BASIC, on a 100 Mhz i486 PC that was given to me by friends. It had a luxurious 16 MB of RAM, initially only ran MS-DOS, and later ran Windows 3.1 and ’95.

A next upgrade came as a 400 Mhz AMD desktop, given again by friends, on which I ran a local EasyPHP webserver that I used to learn web development with PHP, MySQL and HTML/CSS. I coded a mod for Wolfenstein 3D on that machine, too.

We had no broadband internet at home back then, so I would download and print out coding tutorials at school. At the one library computer that had internet access, and I completed the tutorials at home. The source codes of turn-based web games, JavaScript tidbits and HTML page snippets were carried around on a 3.5″ floppy disk.

Later, when I started coding professionally around age 17, I finally bought my first laptop. My own! I still remember how happy I was. I got my first gig as a freelance coder: creating a PHP script that would aggregate RSS feeds, for which I earned about a hundred bucks. Those were the days!

Xcode, iOS, Swift and The MacBook Pro

The world is different today. Xcode simply doesn’t run on an i486 PC, and you can’t save your app’s source code on a 1.44 MB floppy disk anymore. Your Mac probably doesn’t have a CD drive, and you store your Swift code in a cloud-based Git repository somewhere.

Make no mistake: owning a MacBook is a luxury. Not because learning to code was harder 15 years ago, and not because computers were slower back then. It’s because kids these days learn Python programming on a $25 Raspberry Pi.

I recently had a conversation with a young aspiring coder, who complained he had no access to “decent” coding tutorials and mentoring, despite owning a MacBook Pro and having access to the internet. Among other things, I wrote the following:

Android On Mac

You’re competing with a world of people that are smarter than you, and have better resources. You’re also competing against coders that have had it worse than you. They didn’t win despite adversity, but because of it. Do you give up? NO! You work harder. It’s the only thing you can do: work harder than the next person. When their conviction is wavering, you dig in your heels, you keep going, you persevere, and you’ll win.

Winning in this sense isn’t like winning a race, of course. You’re not competing with anyone else; you’re only really up against yourself. If you want to learn how to code, don’t dawdle over choosing a $3.000 or a $2.900 laptop. If anything, it’ll keep you from developing the grit you need to learn coding.

Great ideas can change the world, but only if they’re accompanied by deliberate action. Likewise, simply complaining about adversity isn’t going to create opportunities for growth – unless you take action. I leapfrogged my way from one hand-me-down computer to the next. I’m not saying you should too, but I do want to underscore how it helped me develop character.

If you want to learn how to code, welcome adversity. Be excellent because of it, or despite it, and never give up. Start coding today! Don’t wait until you’ve got all your ducks in a row.

Which MacBook is Fast Enough for Xcode 11?

The recommended system specs to run Xcode 11 are:

• A Mac with macOS Catalina (10.15.2) for Xcode 11.5 or macOS Mojave (10.14.4) for Xcode 11.0 (see alternatives for PC here)
• At least an Intel i5- or i7-equivalent CPU, so about 2.0 GHz should be enough
• At least 8 GB of RAM, but 16 GB lets you run more apps at the same time
• At least 256 GB disk storage, although 512 GB is more comfortable
• You’ll need about 8 GB of disk space, but Xcode’s intermediate files can take up to 10-30 GB of extra disk space

Looking for a second-hand Mac? The following models should be fast enough for Xcode, but YMMV!

• 4th-generation MacBook Pro (2016)
• 3rd-generation Mac Mini (2014)
• 2nd-generation MacBook Air (2017)
• 5th-generation iMac (2015)

When you’re looking for a Mac or MacBook to purchase, make sure it runs the latest version of macOS. Xcode versions you can run are tied to macOS versions your hardware runs, and iOS versions you can build for are tied to Xcode versions. See how that works? This is especially true for SwiftUI, which is iOS 13.0 and up only. Make sure you can run the latest!

Pro tip: You can often find the latest macOS version a device model supports on their Wikipedia page (see above links, scroll down to Supported macOS releases). You can then cross-reference that with Xcode’s minimum OS requirements (see here, scroll to min macOS to run), and see which iOS versions you’ll be able to run.

Further Reading

Awesome! We’ve discussed what you need to run Xcode on your Mac. You might not need as much as you think you do. Likewise, it’s smart to invest in a future-proof development machine.

Whatever you do, don’t ever think you need an expensive computer to learn how to code. Maybe the one thing you really want to invest in is frustration tolerance. You can make do, without the luxury of a MacBook Pro. A hand-me-down i486 is enough. Or… is it?

Want to learn more? Check out these resources:

Learn how to build iOS apps

Machine Learning For Android App Development Using Ml Kit

Get started with iOS 14 and Swift 5

Android App Development Virtual Machine

Sign up for my iOS development course, and learn how to build great iOS 14 apps with Swift 5 and Xcode 12.