I’ve been running Android apps on my Chromebook for the past week, thanks to Google’s App Runtime for Chrome (ARC) beta software. Officially, ARC only supports four Android apps, but unofficially, you can convert any Android app to run on Chrome OS or a computer with the Chrome browser. The conversion is a manual process, however, and you need to find and download the Android .apk, or installable app file to make it work.
Now a new Android app called the Chrome APK Packager removes both of those issues. On the XDA Developers site, a forum member named bpear96 created the Android app that converts other Android apps to run on Chrome. Not only does it remove the manual process involved in the conversion — which requires additional software on your computer and uses command lines — but it also brings a level of safety to the process.