New Chrome tool lets you run Android apps

A new tool under development by Chrome, allows you to run applications on your computer.

Google's hope has always been to be able to run thousands of apps on Chrome and Chrome OS, as long as developers have their versions ported to these platforms, but now this view starts to change with the new tool called Google ARC Welder.

This week Google started releasing a tool called App Runtime for Chrome in the area of Android application development, so that developers can quickly port applications like VLC or others from Android to Google Chrome OS.

Currently Chrome OS has few apps and lacks native apps, and to popularize the platform, it needs more apps.

In the Chrome Store (the Google Chrome and Chromium OS app store) see the ARC Welder tool: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/arc-welder/emfinbmielocnlhgmfkkmkngdoccbadn

ARC Welder in the Chrome Store to add to Google Chrome.

On Windows it creates the button to resemble Chrome OS and make Chrome apps more accessible.

Chrome and Android apps can be accessed with an Chrome OS apps button on Windows.

When accessing the menu item, it asks to save data in a directory on the computer. Choose a directory and you're ready to add applications.

In the case of developers, just insert your APK.

If you want to insert any other application, you can only add it if you have the Android installation program, which is not possible to redeem through Google Play, but there are several sites on the Internet that are similar to Google Play and allow you to download applications, such as Android Dreawer site.

We downloaded the following APK for testing through the Android Drawer website (which contains older and / or newer versions of the apps to download your APK version):

Facebook Lite (at home) and Google Translate:

http://www.androiddrawer.com/26406/download-google-translate-app-apk/

Unofficial alternative store to download Android apps in the version with extension ".apk".

We installed Facebook Lite for testing.

Loading facebook lite.

We installed the first version, it is based on HTML but behaved accordingly.

We did some tests with the wrong password to check the dialog.

New Facebook account registration screen on the ARC Welder app.

We have now tested the most current version of Google Translator on ARC Welder.

Asked for confirmations, we changed the screen orientation, for both tests as above.

Strangely when starting Google Translate, he asks to remove the previous installed application, Facebook lite.

Loading Google Translator

Opened without problems

It took a while to translate but there was no error

The option to translate using voice also works perfectly.

It works just like the Android version, but with a slightly lower processing speed.

Final considerations

Support is not yet official, it is still in the area of developers but it is very stable and it is much faster to run applications through it, eliminating the use of the heavy virtual machine.

For those who are developers, it is an excellent choice to test your applications, but it may contain unexpected flaws because it is still a product for the development environment, but it is worth trying, it is very practical.

Execution is a little slow, but does not consume clear resources of the computer's CPU.

Source: PcWorld's Mark Hachman on information in: http://www.macworld.com/article/2905297/heres-how-to-run-android-apps-on-chrome-with-googles-new-tool.html

Testing of new features and applications by the Tutorial TI team.