Quick guide for running Android applications and games on Windows 8.1 tablet or PC
If you want to run Android on your W8.1 tablet or PC for fun or development, there are several options to try. So here they are:
All things shown in this tutorial should work on Windows 7 too.
Official Android Emulator (based on QEMU) #
Provided by Google. Free.
Pros:
- Latest build of Android
- Frequently updated
Cons:
- Very slow
- Google apps like Play Store are hard to get
Genymotion #
Provided by Genymobile. Free for personal use.
Pros:
- Faster than official emulator
- Lots of goodies like drop apk to install
- Frequently updated with new versions of Android
Cons:
- Needs ARM translation and gapps package to run Play Store and other applications
- Resource heavy
- Doesn’t play nice with touchscreens
- Ugly watermark in the free version
Android x86/Android IA #
Pros:
- Native Android
- Very fast
Cons:
- Drivers are hard to get
- Only few devices fully supported
- Needs to be installed on a separate partition
Windroy #
Provided by socketeq. Free.
Pros:
- Very very fast
- Doesn’t take much space
Cons:
- Older Android build (ICS)
- Buggy
- Since it’s compiled for x86, many apps aren’t supported
- Must install google apps
BlueStacks App Player #
Provided by BlueStacks. Free.
Pros:
- Very fast
- Google apps included
- Simple to use
- Many apps are optimized to work on desktop
- Works nice on a touchscreen
Cons:
- Lots of bloatware
- Older version of Android (4.0.4)
- Must modify registry to change options (more on that later)
- No root
As you can see there is no perfect option here. Genymotion is really good but you need to play with it to get Play Store and ARM apps to run. Windroy is really buggy, and needs a lot of work to become a viable option. Official Android emulator is painfully slow in any flavour. So that leaves us with BlueStacks. For the purpose of this tutorial we will use BlueStacks since at the moment it is, in my opinion, the best way to run Android on a Windows 7/8 machine.
We will consider three options.
Option 1 - Stock BlueStacks #
No real drama here. Go to Bluestacks website, download the installer and you’re good to go. However, if you are annoyed by bloatware, or need access to root, or want a more “simply Android” experience, you will need to consider options 2 and 3
Option 2 - FreeStacks (the easy way) #
I only found about FreeStacks a couple of weeks ago. The idea is you get only stock Android with stock Android launcher and root access, Google apps and nothing more. The installer is really simple too. FreeStacks is maintained by Facebook group (I know, right), and updates are usually a couple of days behind official BlueStacks updates but they are always there. The emulator is very fast, and runs almost all apps from Play Store faultlessly. Even 3D apps worked very nice with high FPS on my 5 year old laptop (Core 2 Duo, nVidia 9700GTS) and also on my Toshiba Encore WT8. It scored just shy of 24000 on AnTuTu.
FreeStacks is by far the easiest way to run Android on your PC, and I recommend it with a great thanks to FreeStacks community. There are a couple of options that need to be set up before using BlueStacks in general, but more on that later.
You can find the latest version (at the moment of writing) here.
Be careful when downloading files from the Internet, and always check them with your antivirus.
FreeStacks Facebook group can be found here.
Option 3 - DIY Rooted BlueStacks #
If you prefer to do everything yourself or just want something special with your emulator you can use this BlueStacks tool. It’s fairly straight forward. Download official BlueStacks, install it, install a custom launcher, and follow the instructions provided with the tool. In the end you end up with something similar to Freestacks but there are much more things you can change (You can disable root, keep BlueStacks apps, etc.).
Configuring BlueStacks #
So you installed BlueStacks, downloaded your favourite apps and everything is working great. It’s just that the default resolution of 1024x600 doesn’t look that great on your 4k display… So let’s address that (and more).
- Press Win + R (or long press Windows Button on a tablet and select Run)
- Type regedit and press OK
- Navigate to the following registry entry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\BlueStacks\Guests\Android
- Here, set Memory to something more to your liking. Value is in megabytes. (Default is 768, be careful to select Decimal when editing values)
- Next, go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\BlueStacks\Guests\Android\FrameBuffer\0
- Use Width and Height to change default resolution of your BlueStacks Virtual Machine, be careful to select Decimal when editing values.
- You can also use FullScreen key if you want BlueStacks to be full screen at startup by setting it to 1. (You can press F11 to switch between fullscreen and windowed modes)
- Restart BlueStacks to see changes (Right click or long press BlueStacks icon in system tray and select Restart BlueStacks)
Configure BlueStacks for tablet use #
If you followed this tutorial to install and run BlueStacks on your Windows 8.1 tablet you probably noticed there is something really wrong with screen orientation. Luckily there is an easy fix for this.
- Long press Windows Button and select Run
- Type regedit and press OK
- Navigate to the following registry entry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\BlueStacks\Guests\Android\FrameBuffer\0
- Set Width and Height inversly (For instance, my tablet runs on 1280x800, so I set Width to 800 and Height to 1280, be careful to select Decimal when editing values)
- Add a new DWORD by going to Edit > New > DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it
EmulatePortraitMode
- Set the value of newly created EmulatePortraitMode key to 1.
- Restart BlueStacks to see changes (Right click or long press BlueStacks icon in system tray and select Restart BlueStacks)
If you do this fix correctly, BlueStacks will work correctly in both portrait and landscape mode.