Support for native Android apps is one of the coolest features in the new version of Windows 11. However, there are some notable limitations to being able to access the Google store.
The most important fact is that you can only officially download apps from the Amazon Appstore, which basically only has a small fraction of the ones you’ll find on the Google Play Store.
It is true that this feature, announced with great fanfare by Microsoft before Windows 11 that was official, it remains to this day in trial mode, limited to the beta channel of the Windows Insider program if you have an account in the US.
But what if there was a way to access the entire Play Store library from any Windows 11 device? It sounds too good to be true, but we’ve tested it and can confirm that the method described in this article works.
It was first discovered by ADeltaX and uploaded to Youtube, although since then A-hAAn provided a simplified version. We explain how to proceed so that you can enjoy it from your computer.
How to install Google Play Store on Windows 11
Before we continue, we should point out that this process does not work with 64-bit x86 devices. There is a separate link listed below for those computers with ARM chips, but it will not work on 32-bit hardware.
On the other hand, you will also need to make sure that virtualization is enabled. Go to “Control Panel> Programs> Activate or deactivate Windows functions”. Make sure the boxes next to “Virtual Machine Platform” and “Windows Subsystem for Linux” are checked.
If you have already installed Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA), you will need to uninstall it as well. Then open ‘Settings> Apps> Apps & features’ and search for it. If nothing appears, it is not installed.
- Go to ‘Settings> Privacy and security> For developers’
- In “Developer mode”, click the switch to turn it on and click “Yes” to confirm.
- Download a new version of Windows Subsystem for Android through the next link. If you’re using an ARM-based device like the Surface Pro X, use this link in its place.
- Once done, go to the ‘File Explorer’ download folder and click on the file known as ‘WSA-Patched’ to unzip it.
- In the search bar at the top of the Start menu, type ‘powershell’.
- In the options on the right, click on “Run as administrator”. Click “Yes” to confirm that you allow the app to make changes.
- In the PowerShell window that appears, paste the following: ‘Add-AppxPackage -Register C: WSA-Patched AppxManifest.xml’, but replace the ‘C: WSA-Patched ‘ section with the location of the unzipped file in ‘File Explorer’ (click on the address bar, then copy-paste). In the following example, this is ‘Add-AppxPackage -Register C: Users anyro Downloads WSA-Patched WSA-Patched AppxManifest.xml’
- It may seem like nothing has happened, but you should now see “Windows Subsystem for Android” in the “Recommended section of the Start menu”. Click to start it
- In the window that appears, click on “Files” to start the WSA.
- After a few moments, you should see a pop-up window that says “Windows Defender Firewall has blocked some functions of this application”. Click “Allow Access” to continue.
- You should now see the Play Store and the Amazon Appstore in the “Recommended Start Menu” section. However, in its current form, you will not be able to log in.
- To resolve this issue, download ADBKit of the link.
- Go again to the Downloads folder in File Explorer and double-click on the ‘ADBKit’ file
- Double click on the file named ‘adb’ and choose ‘Extract all’.
- Return to the “Subsystem Settings” window, click the switch to enable “Developer Mode”. You should now see a message next to it that says “ADB can connect to 127.0.0.1:58256”.
- Launch the Play Store app and keep it open.
- In File Explorer, find and open the ‘ADBKit’ folder that you have already unzipped. Right click anywhere and choose “Open in Windows Terminal”.
- Run the command ‘. Adb.exe connect 127.0.0.1:58526 ‘
- Even if you get an error message, it should have completed successfully. Run the command ‘. Adb.exe devices’ to confirm: if you see ‘127.0.0.1:58526’ in ‘List of connected devices’, it worked.
- Run the command ‘. shell Adb.exe ‘
- Run the ‘su’ command. You should see a message saying “You are now root”
- Run the command ‘setenforce 0’. The PowerShell window should now look like the following.
- Go to the “Play Store” and click “Connect”. The system should now ask you to sign in with your Google email address and password.
- Once logged in, you can install apps just like you would from any Android phone, natively accessing the Google Play Store.
That’s all! You can now install any Android app from the Google Play Store on your Windows 11 computer. These can be pinned to the taskbar and work with Windows 11 multitasking.
They also adjust their appearance to the chosen theme in Windows. If you want to know a lot more about current operating system news, here is some of the related content:
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