Hey there, I’ve been using Bluestacks as my main android emulator for a while, but I disliked how bloated it is, especially that their cloud service app comes preinstalled.
Im wondering if there are other android emulators that are good to use. I’ve already heard about emulators such as:
I haven’t actually tried most of these myself yet since I don’t quite trust them. They are quite sketchy and heavily advertised
Waydroid, by far the best solution
Waydroid works quite well for me, but it’s Linux+Wayland only.
I think you should be able to install the Play Store and Play Services on Windows Android Subsystem, there’s probably guides on how to do that but I’ve never tried myself. I think it uses Windows Subsystem for Linux in under the hood so I imagine it’s probably possible to root it/install additional stuff to it.
Waydroid only fits a small number of configurations, including Wayland and x86. I definitely wish there was something like Bluestacks for Linux
Once it runs it absolutely slaps though! I’m not sure why it’s wayland-only, it still just runs in a window anyway. Nothing seems to really require Wayland there.
But of everything, the performance is impressive, as it’s just a container. Makes for a sick tablet on the 2-in-1 netbooks.
It’s really a shame it’s Wayland only. I always have issues with Wayland; if one Wayland app crashes it effectively brings down my entire machine.
There is Anbox that’s usable on Xorg but I don’t think it’s as performant.
You can run a Wayland compositor under x I believe (heard Weston mentioned a lot)
android x86 and qemu is pretty good
Windows subsystem for android with magisk for root
For Linux there is waydroid which is inspired from the defunct anbox which I used in the past but it is wayland only
The ones in the thumbnail for the link look like they are from sketchy companies that sell your data
And also since when is Google play games an emulator
They’ve been advertising it recently. But for whatever reason, they are using Homescapes and Gardenscapes in their main brunt of advertising so idk why those two lightweight games.
They are slowly testing each game and how it works on Windows.
Play Store literally notifies me each time a new game is added.
As people said here already, I prefer Windows subsystem for Android. It’s built-in and fairly robust.
