Over the years, there have been plenty of solutions for running Android apps on your PC, especially on Windows. Microsoft took its own whack at it with the Windows Subsystem for Android on Windows 11, but even before that, we had solutions like BlueStacks that enabled the same thing, and usually better.

Running Android apps on PC is a fairly popular activity, but what you may not know is that the best way to do it is actually to just use Linux. Thanks to Waydroid, Linux is easily the best method for running Android apps on a PC, and it's very easy to set up. Here's why.

Performance is much better

My laptop doesn't sound like a jet engine

One of the big problems with running Android apps on Windows is the performance hit they take and how it affects your PC's acoustics. On a big desktop with powerful specs, you may not notice it as much, but whenever I used to open the Windows Subsystem for Android on my laptop, it would not only be pretty slow to load, but once it was running, the fan inside the computer would spin up significantly and stay that way as long as the system was running. It wasn't subtle.

Android is, of course, a full operating system, and running it inside Windows means you have to create a virtual machine for it, which adds a lot of performance overhead. A powerful computer may be able to run it just fine, but it will still have an impact on performance.

Waydroid is a good bit different because Android is also based on Linux, and there's a big Linux capability that matters a lot here: Linux Containers, or LXCs. This is a technology that allows Linux-based operating systems to run in a containerized environment while still sharing the host Linux kernel and having more direct access to the hardware. LXCs are the backbone of an operating system like Proxmox, but they technically work on any Linux distro, and Waydroid itself is an LXC that runs Android in a container on your Linux PC.

Because of this, the Android experience is far more performant and takes less of a toll on system resources. Opening Android apps on my laptop feels smooth and responsive, and my laptop doesn't immediately ramp up the fans. It feels like Android apps are just a natural part of the experience.

Things just work better

Touch input feels natural, and apps function

Using Android on Windows PCs can also sometimes be a problem if you try to use a touchscreen as you would on an Android phone. Because Android is emulated, the software is basically translating your mouse movements to touch inputs in Android, and when you actually use touch, it doesn't quite work as expected all the time.

Waydroid changes this, too. Maybe it's the tighter integration with the host hardware, but touch inputs on Waydroid feel just like using an Android phone, so I can easily open menus, slide between pages, and move things around.

That goes for other things, too. One of the primary reasons I use Android on my PC is to listen to music from the Nintendo Music app, which isn't available anywhere other than phones. I recall trying this on my Mac Mini, but the BlueStacks emulator just played no sound at all, and I simply didn't have that problem with Waydroid. And when i tried using Duolingo, I was even able to use the microphone for exercises that required it. The only thing I haven't been able to get working is my webcam, though I also have no use for it in any Android apps.

App compatibility also seems pretty solid so far, and I've been able to use almost anything I want. What's even better is that there's a Linux app called waydroid-helper that can also enable a few extra things to make the experience even better. This allows you to install things like libhoudini, a compatibility layer for Arm software to run on x86 processors, and you can make advanced tweaks to the experience. One I particularly appreciate is the ability to force apps to open in windows and share the desktop with the host Linux system. This causes problems for some apps, but for my usage, it's usually been great.

In fact, I wrote before about how I used my tablet with Linux, and Waydroid was a huge part of that experience. It just made the experience feel natural, and most of the things I care about just work.

Mobile gaming is a potential problem

Too many games don't work

Personally, I'm very happy with Waydroid, but in writing this article, I wanted to test other use cases, and I know a popular one for people is to play mobile games on their PC. I want to be able to recommend Waydroid to those people, too, but unfortunately, my experiments didn't go very well.

I installed a handful of games, including PUBG Mobile, Cut the Rope, Cut the Rope 2, BALL X PIT, Alto's Adventure, Alto's Odyssey, and Asphalt Legends. I was able to get both Cut the Rope games and Alto's Adventure to work (though the former two games didn't work with the forced windowed mode I mentioned above), but the other three games either crashed immediately at launch, froze on the splash screen, or didn't let me move past the menu.

Naturally, I wasn't able to test every game, but that paints a pretty bleak picture for gaming on Android, which is a shame because that's one of the most popular use cases for something like this.

It's also unfortunate because waydroid-helper also includes a useful feature for gaming, that being the ability to map keys to certain touch actions, so you can play games with a keyboard. I wasn't able to test this with a game that really benefitted from it, but I was able to play Alto's Adventure by just pressing the space bar to jump.

I love Waydroid

As someone who has next to no interest in mobile games, Waydroid is still the best solution for running Android apps on a PC. Apps run smoothly, touch inputs work reliably and as expected, and most regular apps work, too. The fact that I can use Android without my laptop trying to take flight is, by itself, a big plus.

However, it's hard to overlook the issues with gaming on the platform. There may be workarounds you can find to get some games to work, but my brief experience was that a lot of the more interesting games just don't work, and that's a big shame. But Waydroid gets somewhat frequent updates, so there's always a chance things will get better.