Android Runtime for Chrome (ARC) is a compatibility layer and sandboxing technology for running Android applications on desktop and laptop computers in an isolated environment. It allows applications to be safely run from a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

, independent of user operating system, at near-native speeds.

Overview

The Android Runtime for Chrome is a partially open-sourced project under development by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. It was announced by

Sundar Pichai Pichai Sundararajan (born June 10, 1972), better known as Sundar Pichai (), is an Indian-American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google. Born in Madurai, India, Pichai earned hi ...

at the Google I/O 2014 developer conference. In a limited beta consumer release in September 2014, Duolingo, Evernote, Sight Words, and Vine Android applications were made available in the

Chrome Web Store Chrome Web Store is Google's online store for its Chrome web browser. As of 2019, Chrome Web Store hosts about 190,000 extensions and web apps. History Chrome Web Store was publicly unveiled in December 2010, and was opened on February 11, 20 ...

for installation on

Chromebook A Chromebook (sometimes stylized in lowercase as chromebook) is a laptop or tablet running the Linux-based ChromeOS as its operating system. Initially designed to heavily rely on web applications for tasks using the Google Chrome browser, Chrome ...

devices running OS version 37 or higher. , the development by Google is taking place behind closed doors with individual repository commits, code reviews and most issue tracking being kept internal to the company. The open sourced parts of ARC are licensed under a

BSD-style license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lice ...

Development

In a limited beta consumer release in September 2014,

Duolingo Duolingo ( ) is an American educational technology company which produces learning apps and provides language certification. On its main app, users can practice vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and listening skills using spaced repetition. D ...

Evernote Evernote is a note-taking and task management application. It is developed by the Evernote Corporation, headquartered in Redwood City, California. It is intended for archiving and creating notes in which photos, audio and saved web content can ...

, Sight Words, and

Vine A vine (Latin ''vīnea'' "grapevine", "vineyard", from ''vīnum'' "wine") is any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent (that is, climbing) stems, lianas or runners. The word ''vine'' can also refer to such stems or runners themsel ...

Android applications were made available in the Chrome Web Store for installation on

devices running OS version 37 or higher. In October 2014, three more apps were added:

CloudMagic Newton is an email management application for iOS, Android, MacOS, Windows and ChromeOS developed by CloudMagic, Inc. The application is known for its searching capabilities, cross-platform abilities and user interface. It has been referred to ...

Onefootball OneFootball is a platform-based football media company. The OneFootball app features live-scores, statistics and news from 200 leagues in 12 different languages covered by a newsroom located in Berlin. In 2019, OneFootball partnered up with Ele ...

, and Podcast Addict. In March 2015, Anandtech reported that

VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desk ...

should be added in the coming months. On April 1, 2015, Google released ''ARC Welder'', a Chrome Packaged App providing the ARC runtime and application packager. It is intended to give Android developers a preview of the upcoming technology and a chance to test their Android apps on the Chrome platform.

Architecture

ARC builds upon the

Google Native Client Google Native Client (NaCl) is a discontinued sandboxing technology for running either a subset of Intel x86, ARM, or MIPS native code, or a portable executable, in a sandbox. It allows safely running native code from a web browser, independ ...

. The Native Client platform is being extended with a

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming inter ...

-compatible layer on top of the NaCl Integrated Runtime and Pepper APIs which emulate the Linux environment in the foundation of an Android phone. This then allows running an almost unchanged Dalvik VM in a sandboxed environment. ARC uses the Chrome permission system, not the Android one.

Security

According to a security evaluation by Meng Xu, ARC apps may communicate with other installed Chrome Extensions and the files stored on the underlying operating system which might open avenues to various attacks. These threats are mitigated by the heavily sandboxed environment of ARC.

Community efforts

During the second half of 2014, before any developer tools or documentation was released by Google, several community efforts about ARC appeared. Vlad Filippov maintains ARChon, an unofficial distribution of the ARC runtime which can be installed to non-Chromebook computers. The same developer also maintains a JavaScript (nodejs) tool to automate packaging Android apps for use with ARC. Other developers created more user-friendly tools beyond chromeos-apk to simplify packaging applications for the ARCon runtime. The first of them is a Chrome Packaged App called twerk and the other is an Android application ARCon Packager It used to be named Chrome APK Packager but the name was changed at Google's request.

Software

There is an active Reddit community which maintains a list of Android apps that work with the ARCon runtime. Vlad Filippov published a guide how to run Opera Mini inside Chromium browser.

Reception

The reception has been mostly positive. Some developers expressed confusion about the wide scale of competing development platforms which Google now offers: Web apps, Chrome Packaged Apps and Android Apps delivered through ARC. Google responded that they are fully committed to all those platforms and encourage developers to choose the one that fits them best.About App Runtime for Chrome (Beta) - Chromebook Help<
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References

External links

App Runtime for Chrome (Beta) extension on Google Web Market

Arc Welder developer tool on Google Web Market

Arc Git repository
(ARC source code repository) {{Google Inc. Free software App Runtime for Chrome Computer security software Android emulation software