These emulators are the best way to run your Android apps and games on Windows

Smartphones are the most ubiquitous devices in our daily lives, and as such, many of the things we use today are designed for them, and sometimes may not work on a computer at all. That's mostly true for games, as the mobile gaming space has grown to massive proportions. As such, you may find yourself wishing you could run Android on your PC. Thankfully, you can do just that.

In fact, there are a lot of options for running Android on Windows. Microsoft may have discontinued the Windows Subsystem for Android in Windows 11, but there's no shortage of alternatives out there. So, if you're looking to run some Android games or apps on Windows, here are the best ways to do so.

LDPlayer

LDPlayer is a great gaming-oriented Android emulator, and it even has some advantages over the more popular Bluestacks. While it still has its own app store, it's a lot less pushy with its own ecosystem and it's more about just letting you install the things you want and using the device as you normally. Of course, it's still optimized for gaming, so it will try to provide dedicated keyboard and mouse controls for popular games, plus you can remap keys on your own to create a more comfortable gaming experience. The automatic assignments won't always be perfect, but you can definitely have a good time playing games with some tweaks.

Much like Bluestacks, LDPlayer also runs Android 9, so it works with just about every game and app on the app store. Performance is pretty solid, too, so you can use your apps without it being a slog, plus you have options to allocate more memory and CPU cores if you so choose. As with most of these options, you also have capabilities like taking screenshots, recording video, faking your location (for games like Pokémon Go), and even shaking the device.

A big benefit of LDPlayer is that there are far fewer ads during normal use, so it's a more pleasant experience once everything is set up.

MuMu Player

Another great alternative if you want to run Android apps on Windows is using MuMu Player, yet another emulator that runs very well. This is one of the most modern options around, since it runs Adroid 12 out of the box, and it works great for gaming. Much like other top-tier options, you have some built-in controls that make mobile games easier to play with a mouse and keyboard, and of course you can remap them to suit your needs. It is a bit more finicky, especially trying to lock or unlock the mouse while playing, but once you get used to it, it mostly works fine.

Otherwise, there isn't much to criticize with MuMu Player. It's fast, it has solid controls for gaming, and it's not overly annoying with ads aside from the initial install process when it tries to get you to install some additional software. You may have to tweak controls in some games, but for the most part, this is a great option. It also includes the expected options for screen recording, location spoofing, and shaking the device.

Overall, while LDPlayer is a bit easier to use, MuMu Player is still a fantastic alternative.

Bluestacks 10

Bluestacks is probably the most well-known name in the Android emulator business, and for good reason. This is an excellent emulator with very wide compatibility. It's heavily focused on gaming, even including its own app store for games, and that means it has optimizations and features to ensure you can play your Android games more easily with a mouse and keyboard. It's also one of the more up-to-date emulators, running Android 9 currently, which ensures almost every game and app is still compatible with it.

On top of the emulation itself, Bluestacks has plenty of features with the ability to take screenshots, record video, location spoofing, and even a button to simulate a device shake for games that require it. It's been around for years, and as such, it's become one of the most fleshed-out options around. You can even set the number of CPU cores and the amount of RAM to allocate to your Android virtual machine. That being said, Bluestacks seemingly fails to assign controls to PUBG Mobile, so you'll have to do it manually. Other games seemed to work fine, though.

A notable downside of this one is that there are a ton of ads, but if you can look past that, this is an excellent choice.

Gameloop

Gameloop, which used to be known as Tencent Gaming Buddy, is another high-profile option that's very similar to Bluestacks. Much like that option, Gameloop puts a big emphasis on its own game store and showing a lot of ads in the interface. The similarities even extend to the Android version it's based on, since it runs Android 9.

That being said, in our tests, Gameloop handled PUBG Mobile a bit more smoothly (the UI is extremely complex, so every emulator will have some problems). Otherwise, it's a fast and widely compatible emulator, and it also provides built-in keyboard and mouse controls you can remap at will. It has all the features you'd expect, like screenshots, video recordings, and so on.

Google Play Games

There are plenty of emulators out there, but not many of them are sanctioned and made by Google itself. Google Play Games is basically the company acknowledging how many people are interested in mobile gaming on PC, and as a result, this is one of the best options out there in terms of controls.

Google Play Games for PC has a more limited library of games than other emulators, which can install pretty much anything from the Play Store, but that means every game on the platform is much more optimized for PC controls. I tried some quick rounds of Left to Survive and Asphalt 9 Legends, and both of them played completely naturally with a keyboard and mouse, which was great.

There aren't a ton of options to mess around with here, but things just work, and as just, it might just be the best option out there — if the games you play are available, that is.

Nox Player

Yet another solid option if you want to play Android games on your PC is Nox Player, which falls more in line with the first four options on this list. Nox is a bit older than other options here, since it still runs Android 7 (there is a version based on Android 9 but it seemingly isn't the most recommended one), but most games are still compatible with this older version of Android.

Aside from that, Nox does a good job offering a wide set of features, including automatic button mapping for popular titles like PUBG Mobile, plus the ability to remap some controls yourself. Games run smoothly, too, and you can change performance settings if you want a bit more performance. It also has the features you'd expect, like being able to record the screen, shake the device, and fake your location. While there are some ads and an app store of its own, it's not as intrusive as Bluestacks or Gameloop.

Genymotion

Most of the options so far have been tailored for gaming, which is one of the most popular reasons to want to emulate Android on Windows. However, if you want to run other kinds of apps, you might want to take a look at Genymotion. This option isn't at all optimized for gaming, and you can't even remap touch areas to the keyboard. But the point of it is simply using normal apps, and for that, it works very well.

Genymotion leets you create virtual devices based on all kinds of hardware and different Android versions (though some releases may ask you to pay), and you can simply use that device as if you had the real thing. You can install Open GApps to have access to Google services, too, so you can then use the Play Store.

While it won't work well for gaming, this is a good way to use apps that may not be available on Windows, like a smart home control app, for example. An interesting quirk of this one is that the virtual machine used to emulate Android actually runs in VirtualBox, so you'll need to install that first, too.

Run Android apps on your PC

As you can see, there are quite a few options for running Android apps on your PC, and truth be told, they're not all that different from each other aside from some UI tweaks and some options being more ad-heavy than others. Ultimately, all of these are worth a try if you're looking to play some Android games on PC or just run some normal apps. There are other options, too, like the built-in Android Studio emulator (though we had some major issues with it), and options like Bliss OS and Prime OS, which are actually meant to be booted on your PC, rather than emulated inside Windows.

Personally, I found LDPlayer to easily be the best of the bunch here, with MuMu Player being almost as great. I'd recommend checking out those two first before diving deeper into other options.