Sort of an Android-y subject, the Windows Subsystem for Android launched to
Windows 11 Insiders in the beta ring today. After a bit of a false start in 2015 with the Android Subsystem in Windows 10 Mobile being unceremoniously scrapped prior to launch, an all-new version is publicly available.
Notes:
- It works on Windows 11 Home or Pro, must be on major version 22000.xxx. Newer builds from the Dev ring won't see the option to install WSA
in the store. (You can find a way to sideload the Subsystem to unsupported builds if you look on Reddit, YMMV.)
- Virtualization needs to be enabled in the UEFI and virtualization features need to be enabled in the OS.
- It'll only show up in the Microsoft Store to be installed if you have your "Country or region" set to United States. (You can change it back once it's installed.)
- Set up and use of the Amazon AppStore for Windows requires a US-based Amazon account (for now). I didn't feel like messing with my Amazon account as every time you change the region, it disbands your Amazon Household which is really annoying.
You can open the Windows Subsystem for Android settings and turn on "developer mode" which will allow you to sideload APKs using ADB. It works, I tried it on my main gaming rig. Pretty neat. I attempted to sideload the Google Play Store, but could not get it or the related Play Services to set up correctly. The APKs install successfully (so they say) but some required permissions are blocked.
Now that it's here, I'm kind of stuggling to decide what Android apps I want to run. My personal device is an iPhone, so most of my apps would be those which have both an iOS and Android version that would sync across accounts (and again, Play Services aren't available). And since there's no app store at all, I need to find clean APK copies to sideload or use APK Extractor from my work phone.
