We’ll cover all that below, once BlueStacks is set up on your computer.
That’s BlueStacks, now in its fourth version, a fully-featured Android emulator designed to run your games just as you would run typical PC games through Steam or other gaming clients, like Origin or .īlueStacks includes a full app software store, the ability to add friends to your list to play with, and even a social network called Pika World where you can connect with other BlueStacks players around you.
There’s a number of Android emulators on the market today for Mac OS, including the Android emulator created by Google to help developers create and publish their apps, but when it comes to gaming, there’s really only one option available to use today. It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking to play a game on your PC originally purchased on Android, or if you’d rather spend your time using Snapchat on your computer instead of your phone, emulation is the way that you can force all of your favorite Android apps to automatically start functioning on your Mac.
Once Google Play Services has applied the latest version fix for your OS, you should be good to go ( Figure K).Whatever the reason, there’s an easy way to install Android apps on Mac OS: emulation. If you don't see a textbox after a few taps telling you the service is up to date, close down and restart your emulator and repeat steps 11, 12, and 13.ġ4. Scroll all the way down to the Build Version cell and tap it a couple times ( Figure J).ġ3. Now that the emulator is connected to a Google Account launch the Play Store and bring up the Settings ( Figure I).ġ2. Proceed with the standard Google Account Setup Wizard ( Figure H).ġ1. From within Settings choose Accounts ( Figure G).ġ0. Open Settings on the virtual instance of the Android OS ( Figure F).ĩ. For this to happen, you must either connect it to an existing or a new Google account. To stop the crashing Google Play Services on the virtual device needs to update.
However, Google Play Services will frequently crash ( Figure E).Ĩ. At this point, you will be able to see the Google Play Store icon on the emulator ( Figure D).ħ. Click OK again, then shut down the Genymotion emulator and restart it.Ħ. Click OK and wait for the install to finish ( Figure C).ĥ. You should get a confirmation that the emulator recognizes the file.
Drag you local copy of the ZIP file directly into the Genymotion emulator ( Figure B).Ĥ. (For your convenience you can get it here.)ģ. Download the signed Google Play Services ZIP file (for Jelly Bean) and save it locally on your Mac or PC. Start Genymotion and choose the Google Galaxy Nexus image running Android version 4.3 (Jelly Bean) ( Figure A).Ģ.
If not, you can find the documentation to do so in the Genymotion User's Guide.ġ. Note: this tutorial assumes you already have Genymotion and VirtualBox (a required dependency of Genymotion) installed on your development machine. The tutorial that follows will have your Genymotion emulator up and running Google Play Services in no time. As Google continues to increase the power and functionality provided by this closed-source-nonofficial piece of the Android stack, not having Google Play Services available on my Genymotion emulator is a serious problem.įortunately, it turns out adding the component is quick and painless on Windows and Mac OS, thanks to a very slick drag-and-drop installer built into the latest version of Genymotion. One issue with Genymotion is that none of the pre-baked images include Google Play Services. SEE: Speed up your Android development cycle with Genymotion As a bonus, Genymotion is free for non-commercial use. Genymotion is a third-party Android emulator that is lightning fast and can save you time when you're doing your development work.