So, at the 2016 Google I/O Developer’s Conference, Google announced that they were bringing the entire Google Play Store to Chromebooks, and that they were doing it without ARC (read more about that here: Android on Chromebooks: Goodbye ARC, Hello Containers). In addition to the Google Play Services issue, ARC also didn’t pass Google’s own Android Compatibility Test Suite (CTS), and making it CTS compliant would have taken a lot of work. It wasn’t really any better of a solution than just writing a separate Chrome OS app. Using ARC to port an Android app to Chrome OS still took work. This means you aren’t able to use ARC to get any of Google’s apps like Gmail to work on your Chromebook.Īfter that first handful of apps was ported over, we all kind of assumed that Google would slowly work with developers to bring more apps to Chromebooks, and that developers would take it upon themselves to use ARC to get their apps working on Chromebooks. The success rate of the ARC Welder (when used by amateurs) is not great, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that many apps require Google Play Services in order to function, which means they will not function on a Chromebook even with the ARC Welder. But then, not long ago Google ported over a small handful of Android apps to Chromebooks using a tool called the App Runtime for Chrome (or the ARC Welder).Īnd because Google sometimes likes to make really horrible decisions, this tool has been available to the public. Chromebooks did not support Android apps. Until fairly recently, this has not been true. Many people have openly admitted that they know the difference between a Chrome app and an Android app, but they just assumed that Chromebooks would run Android apps because, you know. But, despite these obvious clues many people over the years have tried downloading and installing Android apps from the Google Play Store and then wonder why they don’t work. The device is called a CHROMEbook, it runs CHROME OS, so naturally you would find apps in the CHROME Web Store. Ever since the Chromebook was introduced to the world in June of 2011, there has been a lot of confusion about what exactly Chrome OS does and what kind of apps it can run.

Install apps on chromebook