Android emulators to actually use mobile apps in day-to-day life?
My understanding is that Android emulators primarily exist for mobile development and app testing and such-like, and maybe secondarily, to play mobile games.
I want to explore the possibility of using them as a, basically, full-time replacement for installing apps on my phone. More and more apps and services have no "desktop/laptop" version, and no website version. Installing the app on your phone is starting to become a non-negotiable requirement ... one that I'd like to find a work-around to.
So, yeah ... I guess that's the question. Is this a 'thing'? Has anyone experimented with--or flat-out used--an emulator on a desktop/laptop to run their banking app and the like? Is this even possible? Can you connect an emulator to an app-store and just start downloading/installing stuff?
Thanks.
Banking apps won’t run in an emulator. They won’t even run in non-stock android in many cases.
Is it technologically possible to make an android emulator that can fool whatever the banking apps are using for verification? Probably, but like you said there’s no market: emulators are for people testing their apps and people who want to play gacha games on PC. So that’s where the dev time is spent.
You can give Waydroid a shot if you’re on Linux
Maybe keep an old phone on your desk for this sort of thing?
Some people will have a personal phone and a work phone, which is sort of similar.
It seems a little unusual that a bank wouldn't support desktop at all. Maybe switch banks?
That is a good idea, you can use scrcpy to mirror the phone to your computer. Works very well.
Yeah, I don't think this is too far outside the realm of possibility, like I've just used android studio before to run android apps on my mac before, its not particularly hard to set up either, it's just not exactly frictionless as you do have to boot up an entire android emulator, but if you just want to access your apps on your laptop, I think it's pretty reasonable.
I'm personally rather paranoid about using an emulator for something as important as banking, but besides that, I'm pretty sure most banking apps have emulator detection already built in.
Beyond banking apps, which I only thought of mentioning since you outline it in your post, I think Android Studio should be good for everything but gaming, where something like Bluestacks or LDPlayer or smth, which are probably lighter and def better optimized, would be your best bet.
android studio tutorial
I've actually used Android Studio in the past for actual development -- pretty minimal experience, but not a noob. I think I still have a VM lying around on a HDD somewhere, explicitly dedicated to Android development.
It just never entered my head to try it for this use-case before.
Now, I'm thinking of things like SIM cards, accelerometers, GPS detection ... IDK, whatever-all-else phones generally have built into them that laptops generally do not ... and what happens in an emulator to fake those sensors and etc, and how might that screw up legitimate app functionality.
I expect, eg, my pedometer will have to stay on the real phone.
OTOH, though, my primary banking app is one of my prime targets to get to work on a laptop. It kinda infuriates me that I cannot do my banking on my computer.
Wait, they don't even have a website? How do people even discover this bank then? How do you submit proof of identity documents if/when required?
Would you be willing to share the name of the bank? Worth naming and shaming if this is true...
Well ... of course they have a website. That's not the same thing as being able to log in and do your banking online.
Actually, though, I may owe my bank an apology. It looks like they recently added (non-mobile) web-based banking ... I think. There's a login, anyway.
Still, I have other apps with no web-based equivalent, that I would like to get off of my phone.
Sorry if I wasn't clear, by website I meant that you can log in and perform banking operations through it.
Glad to hear you can do that in a browser, otherwise I would be completely baffled.
WSA is no longer officially supported by Microsoft since March 2025.
I use the very excellent Chinese dictionary app Pleco (with $100s of dollars worth of purchased dictionaries) which is only available on Android and iOS. I have gone through a bunch of emulation options over the years for this (including running Android in VirtualBox VM, BlueStacks, etc.)
Finally settled on running it in WSA (Windows Subsystem for Android) which worked the best for me in Windows - the (ARM only) apk worked flawlessly, could be resized, bidirectional clipboard worked, it was basically like using a native Windows app. Support for WSA has officially been discontinued recently by Microsoft, but it can still be installed and used (with some tinkering - there are guides on line on how to do it) and it still works well for Pleco.
I have recently moved my main desktop to Linux, and was able to get it also going using Waydroid. This required a bit more tinkering to make work, but once I got everything configured, it is almost as good as WSA was.
Pleco does not require any GApps or Play Services, App Store or anything, which makes it a bit easier, since I can run it on a very minimal Android image with very little overhead. If you want the full GApps experience, there are options to set that up, although I am not sure how well they work. Something like BlueStacks might be a lot simpler to get going in that case.
I looked into Pleco, it looks quite nice. I've been looking for a Chinese Dictionary, do you think any of the add-ons are necessary out the gate?
It depends on your intended use probably - the app offers a lot. It includes a pretty good free Chinese-English dictionary, and a few free add-on dictionaries as well to get started, so you can get a feel for it.
The free English-Chinese dictionary is just a wordlist I believe, the better options are paid (the New Century E-C is the best one I think, but it's like $30 by itself, the Oxford Chinese Dictionary is less extensive but still pretty good and has both C-E and E-C for only $20 - or get the basic bundle which includes it plus a few other useful things for just $25)
I think the app is most useful if you are learning Chinese or are studying it (or a related field, Chinese history or art or something like that) - for basic translation needs for someone with no Chinese knowledge at all, Google Translate is probably good enough - but for anyone with deeper interest in Chinese, Pleco can become a much superior tool.
If you are more advanced and want a good Chinese-Chinese dictionary, then you have to buy those (there are a few) There are also a lot of specialty dictionaries, Classical Chinese, medical, tea terms, buddhist terms, proverbs, Cantonese, Taiwanese, etc.. (some are even free) Some of these are Chinese-Chinese so best for someone who already understand enough Chinese to make use of them. Once you install the app, you should be able to explore what is available.
There is also a decent flashcard system, OCR, handwriting recognition, etc. Also various readers and materials for language study.
If you are serious about learning Chinese, then the professional bundle gives you a lot for $50, and I think it's well worth it. Great thing about Pleco is once you buy any of the add-ons, you get a key that you can use to re-activate all your purchases unlimited number of times, on either Android or iOS (not sure if there is a limit on how many can be active at one time, but I use it both on my phone, and Desktop (using Waydroid currently) and never had a problem re-downloading the purchased dictionaries and add-ons, and it works without GApps or Play Services - the app connects directly to Pleco servers to authorize.
Maybe try something like BlueStacks?
Maybe?
Looks like it's Windows/Mac specific (I'm on Linux) ... might still be feasible, but that would mean 2 layers of emulators. Calling it Plan B for now.
I’ve wanted to do something similar to run apps that have no native linux program. If i recall correctly i was not able to run apps via waydroid because the apps only were compiled for ARM devices which my laptop was not.
This was a long time ago so maybe ive gotten the details wrong.
Having just gone through setting up Waydroid to run an ARM only apk, you can install an ARM translation layer (either libndk or libhoudini - see https://github.com/casualsnek/waydroid_script) and then the ARM apk should work on x86 - at least it does for me.
One of the worst parts of the app takeover is not being able to use my laptop monitor to do things. I have a mapping app (Avenza) that I've purchased a few geo referenced PDFs on, I wish I could open the app on my laptop and have a larger screen to work from. Many of these maps are available elsewhere and I can import kml data to it, but this stuff should be available on their website or on a desktop program, not locked in an app.