Windows · Emulator
An Android emulator for Windows with no ads in it.
Google Play, keyboard and mouse game controls, controller support, macros, and as many instances as your PC can run.
AndroidBox runs Android apps and games on your Windows PC, with nothing in the way: no ads, no upsell screens.
It runs Google's own Android Emulator, the same engine inside Android Studio, on your graphics card, and shows Android in one clean window. There are no accounts to make, no bundled apps and no telemetry.
It covers what most people want from an emulator: Google Play for installing apps, game controls for a keyboard, mouse or controller, macros for repetitive tasks, and several Androids running side by side.
It's free, MIT-licensed, and updated through regular releases on GitHub. Everything it stores lives in one folder you can delete.
Screenshots
Highlights
Map keys, mouse and controller buttons onto touch spots. Joystick, aim, fire, skill, swipe, tilt and more, saved separately for every game.
Each instance has its own apps, accounts and settings. Clone them, back them up, tile them, and mirror your input to all of them.
Runs on your graphics card at 60, 90, 120, 144 or 240 FPS, with ARM apps and games supported.
Record taps and swipes, then let a macro wait for the screen, repeat until something shows up, or tap a picture wherever it appears.
No ads, no bundled apps and no telemetry. Google Play asks for your Google account, as on any Android phone.
The Google Play images can't be rooted, so apps with root detection are happy.
Android 16 with Google Play, and Android 11 for older games that only ship 32-bit ARM code.
Save an instance exactly as it is, apps and screen included, and return to that moment any time.
Keep controls, macros and presets together, and sync them between PCs through any folder your cloud storage already keeps up to date.
Getting started
You need Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), a graphics card with current drivers, and Windows Hypervisor Platform turned on. AndroidBox tells you if it's off and opens the right settings page. Allow about 4 GB of disk space for Android, plus up to 10 GB per instance.
Get Androidbox-Setup from the latest release on GitHub.
Windows may warn that the app is from an unknown publisher, because it isn't code-signed. Choose More info, then Run anyway. The wizard installs for everyone on the PC, or just for you if you choose Install for me only.
Open AndroidBox and choose Download and install. It fetches Google's emulator and the Android 16 image (about 1.9 GB) and checks every file.
Press Start Android. Google Play asks you to sign in before it installs apps; or skip that and drag in an .apk file instead.
In detail
Open the game, press Ctrl+Shift+E, click where a button is and press the key you want for it. Add a joystick, aim, look, fire, scope, skill, turbo, hold, swipe, tilt or macro control, drag them into place and press Done.
Starter layouts for shooters, MOBAs, racing games, platformers and endless runners give you a head start, and layouts export to a file you can share.
Xbox, PlayStation and Switch Pro controllers, 8BitDo pads and most other gamepads work straight away, wired or over Bluetooth. Plug in two for couch co-op.
Without game controls they navigate Android: A is Enter, B is Back, Start is Home.
Record taps, swipes and key presses once, play them back at half to four times the speed, repeat them as long as you like, and give them a hotkey that works even when another program has the keyboard.
Smart steps compare colours on screen, so a macro can wait for a button, skip steps when something isn't showing, or tap a picture wherever it appears.
A profile keeps your control layouts, macros, presets and preferences together: make one for yourself and one for streaming. There's no server and no login, and AndroidBox uploads nothing itself.
Saved states capture an instance exactly as it is, which is handy before a boss fight or a risky setting.
Block ads filters ad networks inside every app and game through AdGuard DNS, and the ad-free browser option installs Firefox from Mozilla with uBlock Origin ready to go.
Ads that apps serve from their own servers can't be filtered by any DNS blocker.
AndroidBox contacts dl.google.com for Android downloads, GitHub to look for updates, Mozilla only when you install Firefox from the app, and any download mirror you add yourself.
If Google's servers are slow or blocked where you live, add a mirror. Every package is still checked against its checksum.
Turn on Let Claude Code control Android in Settings and AndroidBox gives Claude Code tools for your running instances: screenshots, reading what's on screen, tapping, typing, installing apps and reading logs.
Turn the switch off and the helper is deleted.
Questions
AndroidBox itself has no ads and never will. Inside Android, Block ads stops ad networks in apps and games, and the ad-free browser handles websites and YouTube. Ads that apps serve from their own servers can't be filtered by any DNS blocker.
No. The Google Play images can't be rooted. The upside is that apps with root detection keep working.
Not for AndroidBox. Google Play asks for a Google account, as on any Android phone, and you can skip it and install apps from .apk files. A profile is just a name on your PC, with no password.
Everything lives in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Androidbox, apart from the program itself. You can move it to another drive from the All instances page, and the uninstaller asks whether to delete it.
No. Those games check for emulators at startup and quit or refuse to run, and AndroidBox doesn't try to hide the emulator from them. Try them on a real phone, or on Google Play Games on PC if the publisher supports it.
Some older games only ship 32-bit ARM code: create an instance with Android 11 and install it there. If Android crashes as it starts, set Graphics to Automatic, then Software, in the instance's Settings.
Google publishes Play Store images for new versions long before they're stable enough for games. Android 16 is the newest stable one, and its ARM translator runs games that crash on Android 15.
Download the installer from GitHub and have Android running in a few minutes. It's free, and the source is there too.