Android apps running native on macOS

In practice, the Google Play Services dependencies and other walled-garden initiatives from Google will make this less useful than it could otherwise be. But still, this is really cool.

Is this significantly useful to anyone?

It’s a neat accomplishment. And it was worth doing for that alone. Absolutely hacker worthy.

But as someone with an Apple Silicon Mac, I can run iOS apps on my computer if the developer has allowed it and I don’t. I’ve never come up with an actual need. It turns out it’s never really a problem for me.

The few things I use a lot on my phone already have desktop equivalents. The long tail stuff tends to be stuffed that I wouldn’t really use from my computer anyway. Like locking my car or using a banking app. One I don’t need, the other is already covered by the website.

So I’m wondering if anyone has found a strong use for this kind of tools.

Meanwhile I ignore most of the posts here that are Apple-related, this one was able to draw my attention. Checked the 'how it works' page and was impressed how easily Claude made the 32-to-64 bit ARM translator for you. We need more effort of this kind for the x86 ecosystem, generated or not, but the mobile-app-everything culture becomes really annoying and needs to be fought this way.

Handy for Minecraft players on Mac: windows players may be on Java or on bedrock versions, but mobile and console players are all only on bedrock. Being able to run the Android version on Mac means I can play with local console players or join a bedrock realm.

(There are compatibility workarounds if you run your own server but I don’t want the headache of doing so).

Perhaps one day Mojang will enable Macos users to run the iPad (bedrock) version of Minecraft as well..

Arguably not a bad use of a claude subscription, provided that it actually works.

Cross-platform has never been easier than ever

Reminds me of Google vs. Oracle lawsuit for API fair use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....

Crazy I was the first to star on GitHub. I’m going to give this a try for some tinkering projects.

Great project...it would be awesome to be able to run APK on the iPhone

People take the iOS version of Fortnite and repackage it to run on Mac.

This is awesome, now this needs to work on Windows

This is very cool! Next IOS.apk? ;)

Slightly off topic, what skill/diagram tool did you use to make the diagrams?

Couple issues with this right off the bat:

- Seemingly relies on the Java virtual machine for simulation -- no support for native ARM binaries?

- Stores data inside the .app

No app sandboxing? User files and settings stored in the /Applications/ folder, rather than the User’s home folder?

Naming it Mac.apk is a poor choice. So it's Mac.apk.app?

Overall this repo has a lot of tells of a low quality LLM generated app. Many issues with data structuring, naming etc.

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