There are smartphones and tablets available with Windows but Android is the most popular operating system when it comes to the mobile devices.

As our desktop or laptops run on Windows, we have to switch between the two operating systems to share the data among the two devices.

This stuff is transferred either locally by USB or Bluetooth or synchronizing in the cloud.

But is there a software to share and run the apps you have installed on your Android device on your Windows machine?

Yes! You can do it using an Android emulator app. Some of the popular emulators include BlueStacks App Player, YouWave, and KoPlayer.

BlueStacks:

This is a free program that allows you to use free Android apps on your PC or laptop.

You can download this software from its official website.

A key aspect of Bluestacks is to run Android games on Windows, so when you run this software, game recommendations occupy most of the screen.

BlueStacks has internally integrated Google Play, which allows you to search and install apps just as you do on your Android device.

You can also configure BlueStacks to work with social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

YouWave:

This is another software that lets you enjoy Android experience on your Windows machine.

This  runs Android apps by using Oracle VirtualBox as an emulation engine. If VB is already installed on your machine, uninstall it before installing the Android emulator. Otherwise, it will not install on your local machine but on Windows guests.

To install the Android apps in this program, you will have to first install Google Play or APKs.

YouWave is available in both free and premium editions at its official website.

The free version runs on Android  4.0.4 (ICS), and you can try it out for a 10 day period.  The premium version runs on 5.1.1 (Lollipop) and is available at $29.99 with a 10-day trial.

KoPlayer:                  

KoPlayer is a free program specifically developed to run Android games on PC. Like BlueStacks, this program also has build-in Google Play, from where the users can download and install any app.

This emulator can be downloaded from its official website. Upon launching the program for the first time, you will need to sign in using your Google account and password.

KoPlayer is compatible with Windows xp/7/8 and requires a graphics card that supports OpenGL 2.0 to run.