How to run Android Apps(APK) files in Ubuntu

Android is the most popular Smartphone operating system. Many of us would like to run Android application in Linux operating system. Running Android application on Windows is easy as there are so many softwares available, like Blustacks. While running Android application on Linux is somehow little-bit tricky.

Anbox is the open-source android emulator for Linux. It runs almost all Android application. Anbox is less emulator, it run whole Android system under the same kernel as host operating system.

Installation

In this article, we will install Anbox step by step and install APK file.Follow this steps and you can also run Android appication in your computer.

Step-1

Open Terminal by pressing shortcut key CTRL+ALT+T or from the launcher.

Step-2

Add Anbox repository to your system.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:morphis/anbox-support

Step-3

Update your system repository.

sudo apt-get update

Step-4

Install the anbox-modules-dkms package

sudo apt install -y anbox-modules-dkms

Step-5

Load the kernel modules.

sudo modprobe ashmem_linux
sudo modprobe binder_linux

Step-6

you should have two new nodes in your systems /dev directory.

ls -1 /dev/{ashmem,binder}

You can check if snap is correctly installed.

snap --version

Step-7

Install Anbox from the snap

sudo snap install --devmode --beta anbox

Now lauch Anbox with bellow command or from the application window.

anbox session-manager

To install Android application, you need to install adb tool. Install it by following command.

sudo apt install android-tools-adb

Now you need to get APK file. You can also download APK file from online websites like APKMirror or APKPure. Make sure APK file is x86 or x86_64 architecture as Anbox only supports x86 architecture. And then install apk file from your local files with bellow command.

sudo adb install my-apk-file.apk

If the Anbox container is not running yet you can start it with loading the application manager application:

sudo anbox.appmgr

You can also remove Anbox with bellow command.

sudo snap remove anbox

Remove PPA from the system and installed kernel modules

sudo apt install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:morphis/anbox-support

Conclusion

This is it. You can install and play Android games and other application. I hope you liked this article. Please do your suggestion in bellow comment box. Thank you.