List all android emulators

15 BEST Android Emulator in 2021 (Windows PC, Mac)

Updated November 23, 2021

Following is a handpicked list of Top Android Emulator, with their popular features and website links. The list contains both open source(free) and commercial(paid) software.

LDPlayer offers an ideal Android emulation system. It provides plenty of comprehensive features to fulfill every which is performed by any Android device. You can download Android Games and apps from pre-installed LD Store or Google Play.

Top Android Emulator for Windows PC, Mac

1) LDPlayer

LDPlayer offers an ideal Android emulation system. It provides plenty of comprehensive features to fulfill every which is performed by any Android device.

Features:

• You can download Android Games and apps from pre-installed LD Store or Google Play.
• It helps you to manage your gaming automatically.
• Offers custom control with keyboard and mouse
• It allows you to open several games simultaneously.
• Supported Platform: Windows PC

2) Bluestacks

Bluestacks is a very popular Android emulator. It is one of the best Android emulator for PC that offers custom key mapping for keyboard configurations. It helps you to improve your target and reaction time while playing a game with the keyboard and mouse.

• You can play multiple games simultaneously.
• Record and replay any action in real-time.
• It allows you to do video recording and screen recordings.
• Supported Platform: Microsoft Windows, and Apple macOS.

3) GameLoop

GameLoop is an Android emulator that is used as a gaming platform. It is an ideal emulator if you want to play games on your desktop. GamLoop emulator includes many popular games like Call of Duty: Mobile and PUBG Mobile.

Features:

• It supports android PUBG mobile games and allows them to play on PC.

• This Android Emulator for Mac offers configured controls for playing PUBG games on PC.
• Users can customize PUBG mobile’s control overlay.
• This Emulator doesn’t ask for any type of account creation, so no need to register on it.
• This simulator works in a low configuration computer tool.
• Supported Platform: Windows, Mac

4) NoxPlayer

Nox Player is another Android Emulator which is recognized by gaming lovers around the world. You can run this Emulator on various devices that allows running multiple functions.

Features:

• It is one of the best emulator for PC that offers open keyboard mapping running with a single click, all gaming controls on the mouse, and keyboard.
• Nox player comes with a default macro recorder to record the complex operations.
• It offers the best user experience and superior performance.
• Supported Platform: Windows, Mac

5)Memu

Memu is easy to install an Android emulator app. It is one of the best Android emulator for PC which offers support for Intel and AMD chips, as well as integrated and dedicated graphics.

Features:

• Range of keyboard mapping options to enhance your gaming experience.
• Provide an option for virtualization.
• It offers various dedicated keyboard settings for the fast gaming experience.
• Supported Platform: Android and Microsoft Windows.

6) AndY

AndY is another popular Android emulator. It breaks down the main barrier between mobile and desktop computing by keeping the customer updated with the latest Android upgrades.

Features:

• It offers storage capacity to users and the freedom to play any games available on the Android platform with ease.
• It provides the feature of the phone as a joystick so that the user never has to leave multi-touch or amazing gaming elements.
• AndY offers smooth interaction between mobile and desktop devices.
• This Android Emulator for Mac allows users to download any app from any desktop browser to AndY OS.
• Supported Platform: Android, macOS, and Microsoft Windows.

7)Genymotion

Genymotion is a multi-support Android emulator. The software helps you to speeds up testing, share live demos. You can also monitor performance across all devices.

Features:

• It offers high definition pixel compatibility, which provides better clarity on your PC.
• It is one of the best Android emulator for Linux that allows you to test the products in a secure virtual environment.
• It allows you to use a desktop webcam as the video source to record screencasts.
• This Android emulator for Ubuntu is capable of emulating more than 3000 Android device configurations like the Android version and screen size.
• This Android emulator for Mac has strong sensors, like GPS and multi-touch.
• Supported Platform: Android, Mac OS, Microsoft Windows, and Linux

8)PrimeOS

PrimeOS emulator provides a complete desktop experience the same as Mac OS or Windows with access to many Android applications. This Android Emulator is designed to bring you both worlds – a complete fusion of Android and PC.

Features:

• Support for dual boot with a single click with a PrimeOS installer.
• It combines the Android ecosystem with the system interface to provide a great gaming experience.
• It offers high performance when compared to the Windows budget system.
• Supported Platform: Android, Mac OS, and Microsoft Windows.

9) Android-x86

Android X86 is an open-source platform. This is an open-source Android emulator which is licensed under Apache Public License 2.0.

Features:

• Provide WiFi support with GUI.
• Power Suspend/resume (S3 mode)
• Offer Battery Status.
• V4l2 Camera support.
• It offers support for netbook native resolution.
• Allows mirror mode on external monitors.
• External storage automount support.
• Support external keyboard
• Supported Platform: Windows PC

10) ARChon

ArChone is Google’s official App Runtime for Chrome package. This streamlined Emulator has the ability to run any Android app as a ChromeOS app.

Features:

• Very lightweight because it is integrated with Google Chrome.
• You can use it with all operating systems.
• It is one of the best Linux Android emulators that provide support for the latest Android system.
• This Android emulator Linux can be used for all applications and Android games.
• Supported Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux

11) Ko Player

Ko player is an Android emulator tool that helps users gain the quality Android playing experience on their Windows PC or Mac. The main focus of this Emulator is to provide a lag-free gaming experience to its users.

Features:

• It allows you to take advantage of all the features and functions of Android without owning any device.
• Ko player has simple, easy to use, and interactive user interface.
• The built-in video recording allows you to record your favorite videos and enjoy them at your convenient time.
• This Android app emulator also allows you to record videos.
• Enhance gaming performance.
• You can record and share your gameplay with your friends or anyone you want.
• It comes with an inbuilt Google Play Store, thus giving you access to any app you want.
• Supported Platform: Windows, Mac

12) Droid4x

Droid4X is an Android emulator developed for Windows PC that allows you to user-run mobile applications and games using on a desktop. This Emulator supports most of the games available in the play store.

Features:

• It helps you to complete user experience on PC and supports the touch screen computer to work across devices.
• This Emulator allows you to customize controls as per their needs and can directly download the app to the Emulator.
• This Android emulator for Windows 10 provides supports for keyboard and gamepad for the quick configuration of games.
• Supported Platform: Windows PC

13)ARC Welder

ARC Welder is another Android emulator tool that allows Android applications to run on Google Chrome for Windows systems.

Features:

• It is one of the best Android emulators for Windows that allows you to test and run Android applications within Chrome OS to overcomes any runtime errors or bugs.
• You can test applications in the Google Chrome web browser.
• Supported Platform: Windows PC

❓ What is Android Emulator?

An Android emulator is a software application that allows your mobile to imitate Android OS features into your PC. It allows you to install Android Apps on your computer or laptop and use them natively. It is mainly used for debugging purposes.

⚡ What are the benefits of using Android Emulator software?

Here are some other reasons for using Android Emulator:

• It will have a larger display thus also offers better controls to use applications in computers.
• You don’t need to care about the battery life of your Android devices.
• PCs are highly powerful than Android devices so that it can handle HD games and videos at a decent speed.

💻 How do Android Emulators Work?

Android Emulators work on the principle of platform virtualization for both hardware and software. The AVD manager (Android Virtual Device) helps you to set up and do the configurations for virtual Android devices.

🏅 Which are the Best Android Emulators for PC?

Here are some of the best Android emulators for PC:

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Android emulators

This page is about emulating Android on other computers, like desktops. For the inverse, see Emulators on Android OS.

Android

Developer	Google Open Handset Alliance
Release date	2008
Emulated	✓

Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. It was originally developed in secret before launching in 2008 as a competitor against Apple’s iPhone. While other mobile operating systems had been made throughout the years, none have emerged in terms of market share nearly as much as Android.

Android is like a Linux distribution in that it uses the Linux kernel to facilitate communication with the hardware and manage processes on the system. Unfortunately, the similarities end there as Android uses an entirely different toolset from standard Linux distributions and no support is given for running it on PCs. (Software development on Android is also nothing like Linux development as apps are compiled into architecture-specific APK s via Java which, like IPA files on iOS, are specially designed Zip files. They may be occasionally coupled with OBB files). While Android can technically run Linux binaries, doing so requires superuser privileges that Android does not provide by default. For many devices, you can expect to see a custom ROM that has an integrated su binary (or a means to install it easily, such as a custom recovery) but not all devices have one.

However, the Linux kernel is flexible enough that it can be emulated well unlike iOS, older cell-phone models, and older Japanese Galapagos mobile phones. While Android natively supports mice [N 1] , most apps expect users to have a touchscreen, so Android emulators will usually default to emulating touchscreen presses like DS emulation (though it can be less than ideal in many cases). The host’s keyboard may often emulate the button controller add-ons, and some emulators support Xbox 360 controllers as well with some more tweaks.

Contents

Emulators

Important Note: These emulators are usually closed source and while they’re distributed for free, their devs look for roundabout ways to monetize them. One such high profile case was BlueStacks. Make sure to check if there are pre-installed apps on your emulator (and disable them), monitor your Internet connection download caps and processor activity to detect any abnormal activity (and block domains accordingly if the need arises) and avoid as much as possible giving sensitive account data (just in case it’s key-logged). Besides basic safety, these precautions often make impacted emulators run much faster when the adware services and apps are turned off.

The VM column describes what backend technology the emulator uses. Emulators labeled with «VirtualBox» sometimes needs the user to install Oracle VM VirtualBox. Usually, it is installed automatically.

Comparisons

Setting up the emulator itself is not too hard, but a bit of tinkering is required to add the Google Play store and ARM processor emulation (what you need essentially here to play the commercial releases) as well as Xbox 360 controller support. Not noob-friendly, but if you’re experienced enough with Android to know your way around a rooted filesystem it shouldn’t be too hard.

Note as of November 25th, 2019: The above paragraph is outdated and ARM Emulation has been broken in Genymotion for a while, so you can’t use ARM apps unless you get a really old version.

BlueStacks Also commercial with a free option (requires a google account). It’s less good than Genymotion and doesn’t handle USB cable emulation. Previous versions used to come with an installer with adware comes with junk apps within the emulator and has a non-intuitive uninstaller, but that’s no longer the case today. It includes Google Apps by default, though you’ll need to install a file manager to copy game cache when loading your own .apk files. MEmu A free Android emulator with very good accuracy, sometimes outperforming BlueStacks. LDPlayer An Android emulator also with good accuracy. When testing games along side Nox, LDPlayer shows to have better performance/compatibility with games. Droid4x

Has good accuracy but forcefully uninstalls VirtualBox, so it cannot co-exist with Genymotion and Xamarin. It’s not recommended because it will install hidden background services (xunlei.exe, and Thunder.exe, both by the Chinese company which developed Droid4x) that seed Chinese torrents constantly and they are a pain to uninstall or deactivate (in case you’ve already fallen for it, use Revo Uninstaller).

Andy OS Not recommended because it will install a cryptocurrency miner on your system without asking or informing about this to the user. Just like Genymotion, Andy OS uses VirtualBox, but with a twist: if it detects an installed VirtualBox during installation, it will delete it and will refuse to work. Beware! DuOS Not to be confused with a similarly-named Nintendo DS emulator by Roor, is a relative newcomer to the Android emulation market, made by American Megatrends i.e. the very same people behind the BIOS/UEFI firmware your PC may be using. Emulation is modest at best, with games and apps such as DraStic struggling on lower-end hardware. And to top it all off, it isn’t free either. Google Chrome Can open .apk files using the ARC Welder extension, though their emulation on PC is average at best. Here’s a compatibility list and a dedicated subreddit. Google has announced Play Store for Chrome OS, but it works on a different «container» technology that is embedded in the Chrome OS. In addition, Google will discontinue Google Chrome apps on PC, so any major updates to ARC Welder for PC is unlikely. Windroy (Without the ‘e’ suffix) is a fast Android emulator that does not rely on VirtualBox or any similar technology. It isn’t accurate though. While Google Play store can be installed with some tinkering, not many games can be installed (due to not faking device names) and will spawn multiple harmless-yet-annoying app_process.exe crashes. The official site is down since July 2016, so any updates are unlikely. Windroye (With the ‘e’ suffix) uses VirtualBox, but still offers better performance than BlueStacks. The Play Store is installed by default and has no stability issues found in Windroy. A related Reddit topic can be found here. Android x86 An open-source project that aims to port the Android operating system to x86-based netbooks. Comes with Google Play and libhoudini (x86/ARM translation layer) installed. 3D acceleration works well both when installed directly on the machine as a local OS and also on VMware. VMware Player 15 supports emulating OpenGL ES 3 on the target and performance is quite good. VirtualBox 3d support is poor and probably won’t work. Android x86 is continually being improved and can be tried fairly painlessly through VMware. Genymotion is (or at least used to be) a closed-source fork of Android x86, designed exclusively to be run on VirtualBox. Anbox A project that aims to run Android applications on Ubuntu distributions. Currently, it is on alpha state and only known to work on Ubuntu 16.04. Anbox requires custom kernel modules to run because unlike other emulators which emulate the whole Linux kernel, this one uses the host system’s Linux kernel directly. Shashlik A project by KDE that aims to run Android applications on Linux using KDE5 and Qt5 technology. The project is infancy state and only known to run on latest Kubuntu versions. It currently lacks ARM processor emulation, so not many games will run. It is however known to play Flappy Bird and can show Spotify’s login screen. It uses modified QEMU to emulate the Android operating system. Last major update was March 2016 and seems abandoned. Xamarin Android Player A newcomer to the Android emulation market. Not much is known about this because it required a minimum of $25/month subscription of main Xamarin products. The main Xamarin products were made available for free after the purchase by Microsoft, but Xamarin Android Player was discontinued. Project Astoria A Microsoft-developed Android emulator for Windows 10 Mobile included in several insider previews. It could run a few applications, though apps required Google Play Services did not run or had issues. This project was reportedly discontinued in November 2015 and its cancellation was confirmed on February 2016, so the emulator is not included in more recent versions of Windows 10 Mobile.

Emulation issues

Google apps

Android is open source, but the Google Play Store has to be licensed from Google in order to incorporate it into a build, including Play Services and many other Google apps. That often means developers pay a fee that can trickle back to the user in some form (either through adware, privacy-invading trackers, or by selling the emulator as a commercial product). Custom ROMs for real Android devices on Android 4 and earlier used to bundle the Google Play Store but this changed with newer versions. The new method is to install a custom ROM and then install «GApps» through another service like the Open GApps Project.

Architectural differences

Many games often optimize and compile specifically for ARM processors, which prevents them from being executable on x86 CPUs, even when using a project like Android-x86. Some emulators like BlueStacks have ARM emulation by default; in others like Genymotion, it is possible to install an ARM emulator manually (though only on older versions as such functionality is broken in newer releases).

Conflict

Many emulators like to uninstall each other for some reason. Droid4x, Andyroid, Genymotion, and Xamarin cannot co-exist on the same machine without modifying their installers, which can be a problem if one game works on only one of these emulators but other games do not.

Antitamper protection

In order to reduce cheating, many games refuse to run if they discover that the device has been rooted. If the emulator comes rooted by default, it must be manually unrooted before the game can be played. The rooting method for modern devices is Magisk, which installs itself in the bootloader instead of the system partition, which makes it harder to detect.

Some games take more aggressive measures to detect the presence of Custom ROMs (unofficial firmware) or Android emulators (like the ones listed in this page) in the variety of ways like checking for the existence or absence of system files in order to prevent the game from running in any unverified environments. These games are very difficult or plain impossible to play on emulators without resorting to cracked versions of the games.

Android-based Operating Systems

There are many forks of Android, these go beyond a custom UI and are new OS’s that use the Android code in addition to writing their own code. depending on how much (and what) new code, features and API’s were added, will determine the effects they will have on Android emulation but if one is for sure, these forks are (most likely) going to cause some emulation issues.

Emulator Specific Issues

BlueStacks

The latest Kingroot’s .apk will do the job when loaded inside BlueStacks. It’s that simple.

Alternatively, you could use Universal BlueStacks Rooting Software on an existing BlueStacks installation. Before opening it, go to the folder where BlueStacks is installed under Program Files, and run «HD-Quit.exe» once.

Then, from the extracted «BlueStacks RootEZ 32_64», open as administrator «BlueStacks RootEZ.exe». Click «Automatic Detect from Installed Bluestacks», enable «Enlarge System (Root.fs) Size to 400MB», and click «I’m ready for Step 1». A command-line window should appear. Now just wait until «Preparing Complete» appears. Then, click «Go for Step 2» and wait until «Rooting is Complete» appears.

Close the application, and open the «output» folder in the same directory as the extracted application. You should find a newly generated «Root.fs» file. You can use it to replace the existing one under «%programdata%\BlueStacks\Android» (Press Windows+R and go there), but it’s recommended to keep a backup of the original in case the new one causes Bluestacks to hang in the loading screen for more than a few minutes.

The package also includes Nova Explorer and Root Launcher. You may verify the rooting status with the «Root Checker» app from Google Play. Considering some apps check for Google Play services for online checks, you can also install «Modded Google Play Store», «Lucky Patcher» and «Magisk».

Andyroid

On the taskbar, right-click Andyroid’s notification icon, and choose Settings, Advanced, Set Andy Protocol. Type «tcp» and confirm, then launch Andyroid.

Android-x86

• 3D Support is broken on VMWare when using newer kernels:

Pass in a kernel option to grub when booting. Select the boot entry and then press ‘e’ to edit it, and then ‘e’ to edit again. Add the kernel option here. For example, to use a video resolution of 1920×1080, add ‘video=1920×1080’. Press return to save the changes (for this boot session only), and ‘b’ to boot (the keys to edit and boot may be different depending on your grub version, there are usually instructions on the grub screen for the requisite keys)

Android consoles

Because it’s possible to fork and created you’re own Android-based OS, many developers have used Android to power their own commercial console. However, as mentioned before, just because it uses Android as a base does not mean they will all work properly on a normal Android emulator.

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Name	Platform(s)	Version	VM	Accuracy	FLOSS	Active	Recommended
PC / x86
Genymotion		3.2.1	VirtualBox	High	✗	✓	✓
BlueStacks		5.1.0.1129	QEMU (before v2.5) / VirtualBox (after v2.5)	High	✗	✓	✓
MEmu		7.5.5	VirtualBox	High	✗	✓	✓
LDPlayer		4.0.50.3	VirtualBox	High	✗	✓	✓
NoxPlayer		7.0.0.9	VirtualBox	High	✗	✓	✓
MuMu		1.1.0.2 1.1.0.5 (v2.3.17) (Chinese Version)	VirtualBox	High	✗	✓	✓
Anbox		git	Not an emulator (wine-like approach)	✓	✓	✓
Android x86		14.1-r5	VirtualBox, VMWare (for 3d acc)	Mid	✓	✓	✗
Android Studio		4.0	QEMU	Low	✓	✗
Andy OS		0.47.226.1096.26	VmWare	High	✗	✓	✗
AMI DuOS		2.0.8.8511	VirtualBox	Mid	✗	✗	✗
ARC Welder (Google Chrome)		ARC 50.5021.602.0	Original	Mid	✗	✗	✗
ARChon (Google Chrome)		ARC 41.4410.238.0	Original	Mid	✗	✗
Droid4X		0.10.7	VirtualBox	High	✗	✗	✗
KoPlayer		2.0.0	VirtualBox	High	✗	✗	✗
LeapDroid		1.8.0	VirtualBox	High	✗	✗	✗
Peak App Player		1.2.5 Beta 2	VirtualBox	High	✗	✗	✗
Shashlik		0.9.3	Original	Low	✓	✗	✗
SmartGaGa		1.1.646	VirtualBox	High	✗	✗	✗
Windroy		4.0.3	Original	Low	✗	✗	✗
Windroye		2.9.1	VirtualBox	Mid	✗	✗	✗
Xamarin Android Player		0.6.5	VirtualBox	Mid	✗	✗	✗
XePlayer		6.0.10	VirtualBox	High	✗	✗	✗
YouWave		5.11	VirtualBox	Mid	✗	✗	✗
Mobile / ARM
LineageOS		18.1 (Raspberry Pi 3/4)	Not an emulator (actual AOSP)	High	✓	✓	✓
Anbox		git	Not an emulator (wine-like approach)	✓	✓	✓
Project Astoria		Discontinued ($)	Original	Low	✗	✗	✗
Consoles
LineageOS		15.1	based of the Nvidia Shield TV build of LineageOS