Google may soon allow over a million Android apps to run on Chromebooks. According to a report by Ars Technica, a Reddit user running version 51 of Chrome OS spotted an option that reads “Enable Android apps to run on your Chromebook”, which quickly disappears. After digging into the source code, it was revealed that users may soon get to “Choose from over a million apps and games on Google Play”. The user was also able to find instances of the arrival of Google Play Store on Chrome OS.
The ‘ARC opt in’ mentioned in the source code seems to suggest that this feature will be an expansion of the App Runtime for Chrome (ARC) project. The project started in 2014, and Vine, Evernote and Duolingo were among the first to be made available to Chromebook users. Last year, Google launched the ARC welder app that allowed Android apps to run on Windows, OS X and Linux.
It is possible that Google may introduce the new feature during Google I/O, which is scheduled to take place from May 18 to May 20. Google may also unveil Android N at the event. The developer preview for Android N is already available for select devices, and introduced a number of features, one of which was the inclusion of multi-window support. The feature will be available for phones and tablets, and will allow users to run two apps side-by-side.