Android has come a long way since its release over a decade ago. Early versions of the operating system were criticized for their visual design and lack of quality apps, and iOS was often regarded as the older, better-looking sibling. But Android has grown on its own with two different types of visual design. The first, Holo, was released with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (which, Tron-esque, tablet-specific Android 3.0 Honeycomb). Holo has been improved over the years of Android 4.x, and each major iteration brings a fresh new update to the style. In 2014, with the release of Android 5.0 Lollipop, Google introduced its new design language, Material Design. The material has been used for everything in Google’s entire software suite since its launch, and with Google’s guidelines on how to design modern software, Android has seen a wave of new, innovative apps with new designs and improved aesthetics.
So, if you’re an Android user, there’s no reason not to bring some of these incredible apps to your Macbook Pro or Macbook Air. Maybe you’re looking for a weather app that you can use on your laptop to plan your morning outfit. Maybe you prefer to play some Android-specific games on a bigger screen, or you want to test a brand new app without installing it on your phone and taking up valuable storage space. Or for our purposes, you may want to install Snapchat on your laptop to check Stories on the go. Whatever the reason, there is a very easy way to install Android apps on Mac OS: emulation. It doesn’t matter whether you want to play a game on your PC, originally purchased on Android, or you prefer to spend your time using Snapchat on your computer instead of your phone, emulation is the way to push everything. From your favorite Android apps to start working automatically on your Windows 10 PC
There are a dozen solid Android emulators on the market today, and each has its own feature set and dedicated fan base that swears by every app. It can be difficult to decide which app is worth using or not, but for our purposes we’ll turn to our favorite emulator, Bluestacks. let’s take a look
Allow Apps
First, let’s ensure that apps are only installed from places other than the Apple App Store. Before you can download and install Andy, the Android emulator, you need to make sure your Mac allows the installation. To do this you need to:
- Go to “System Preferences” on your Mac.
- Next, you will click on the “Security and Privacy” option.
- Next, click on the “General” tab (first tab at the top left in Security & Privacy).
- If you only have apps that are allowed to be installed on your Mac from the Apple app store, you should check the “Allow apps to be downloaded:” option both in the App Store and in the identified developers.
You should now be able to download and install the Android emulator without any problems.
You may also need to agree to add BlueStacks as accepted developer to properly install the app.
Get Emulator
Go to the BlueStacks website. Here you will download the latest version of Bluestacks from the page, which will allow you to access and use Snapchat from your Mac. To install the application, after downloading the .dmg file, double-click the disk image on your desktop and double-click the package in this installation folder. Your Mac will prompt you to click and accept the installation of BlueStacks on your Mac, just like any application or program you have installed.
At this point, you will want to follow the installation software provided by BlueStacks, choosing the preferences you want for your emulator. Once you have completed your BlueStacks installation, it will now live in your Applications folder in your Mac’s file system.
Open BlueStacks
Now that you have BlueStacks installed, you will navigate to the “Applications” folder on your Mac. Double click the app to open it and you will be prompted to create a username and avatar. The first one can be anything you want, but not something used by another BlueStacks player. As for the latter, you don’t need to spend a lot of time in the avatar section if you don’t want to. Simply press the random button and proceed to the next step. You will be asked to choose some popular games that you like to play to connect with other users. After downloading them, you can switch to the map or skip the game selection altogether.
Google Sign In and Install Snapchat
After entering BlueStacks, you can ignore the general interface and location information provided by the service for now. Instead of looking through all this, you’ll want to click on My Apps, then tap on the System Apps folder to enter your main content list. To open the Play Store, select the Google Play icon just like you would on any other Android device. Google will prompt you to enter your login information for the device, using a tablet interface for the menu and images. BlueStacks runs Android 7.0 Nougat, so anything we try to upload to Google Play runs smoothly on our device.
When you enter your login information for Google Play, you will be redirected back to the app, you can now install apps and launch content from within the store. Unlike the BlueStacks App Store, Google Play hasn’t changed completely here. If you’ve ever used Google Play on a tablet, you’ll know what to expect here; The application is the same. You can search through apps at the top of the browser, choose from the options in the highlighted apps and games carousel at the top of the screen, and scroll through the suggested games below. But even more important is the ability to access your own account. Use your mouse to select the horizontal three-line menu button long-time Android users are familiar with to open the floating menu on the left of your screen. Since you’ve already signed in to Google Play when you first launch the app, you’ll see a standard number of options appear in the BlueStacks terminal, including your account name, your app and game library, and the ability to browse suggested categories like books. movies and more.
From here, search for Snapchat and install it on your device. Note that when you log into Snapchat on BlueStacks, you will be logged out of Snapchat on your other devices.
