BlueStacks is an American technology company known for the BlueStacks App Player and other

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may co ...

-based

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software r ...

products. The BlueStacks App Player allows Android applications to run on computers running

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macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

. The company was founded in 2009 by Jay Vaishnav, Suman Saraf, and Rosen Sharma.

History

The company was announced in May 2011 at the Citrix Synergy conference in San Francisco.

Citrix Citrix Systems, Inc. is an American multinational cloud computing and virtualization technology company that provides server, application and desktop virtualization, networking, software as a service (SaaS), and cloud computing technologies. C ...

CEO Mark Templeton demonstrated an early version of BlueStacks onstage and announced that the companies had formed a partnership. The public alpha version of App Player was launched in October 2011. App Player exited beta on June 7, 2014. In July 2014, Samsung announced it had invested in BlueStacks. This brought total outside investment in BlueStacks to $26 million.

BlueStacks App Player

The App Player, software that virtualizes an Android OS, can be downloaded for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and

. The software's basic features are free to download and use. Advanced optional features require a paid monthly subscription. The company claims the App Player can run 1.5 million Android apps as of November 2019. As of February 2021, BlueStacks claimed its apps were downloaded over 1 billion times. App Player features mouse, keyboard, and external touch-pad controls. In June 2012, the company released an alpha version of its App Player software for macOS, while the beta version was released in December of that year.

BlueStacks 2

In April 2015, BlueStacks, Inc. announced that a new version of App Player for macOS, 2.0, was in development, which was released in July. In December 2015, BlueStacks, Inc. released the new version BlueStacks 2.0 which lets users run multiple Android applications simultaneously. BlueStacks 2.0 was also available for Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks or later, till 2018. In April 2016, the company released BlueStacks TV which integrated Twitch.tv directly into the BlueStacks App Player. This addition allows users to

livestream Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but no ...

their apps to Twitch without the need for extra hardware or software. BlueStacks released

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integration in September 2016, allowing users to stream their gameplay to their Facebook profiles, Pages they control, or

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they belong to.

BlueStacks 3

In July 2017, BlueStacks released BlueStacks 3 based on a brand new engine and front-end design. BlueStacks 3 added App Center which personalizes game suggestions, an account system, chat, new keymapping interface, and multi-instance. Multi-instance allows users to launch multiple BlueStacks windows using either the same or different Google Play account.

BlueStacks 3N

In January 2018, BlueStacks announced the release of the BlueStacks + N Beta which runs on Android 7 (Android Nougat) and claimed to be the first and only Android gaming platform to have Android 7 at the time, since the majority of Android emulators ran

Android 4.4 Android KitKat is the codename for the eleventh Android mobile operating system, representing release version 4.4. Unveiled on September 3, 2013, KitKat focused primarily on optimizing the operating system for improved performance on entry-leve ...

(KitKat), including prior BlueStacks versions. This beta version was powered by an upgraded "HyperG" graphics engine allowing BlueStacks to utilize the full array of Android 7 APIs.

BlueStacks 4

In September 2018, BlueStacks announced the release of its latest flagship version, BlueStacks 4. BlueStacks 4 benchmarks 6-8 times faster than every major mobile phone according to the Antutu benchmark. BlueStacks 4 also includes dynamic resource management which only initializes the required Android libraries, thus freeing resources. BlueStacks 4 provides a new dock and search user interface. A new AI powered key-mapping tool auto maps keys in supported games with key customization also available for further tweaking. In addition, BlueStacks 4 supports both 32-bit and 64-bit version of Android 7.1.2 Nougat. In January 2019, BlueStacks released a 64-bit version of BlueStacks 4 via its early access program. This version runs on a 64-bit version of Android 7.1.2 which allows for improved performance, and more efficient memory usage. The prerequisites for running this build include running a 64-bit version of Windows 8 or later, with virtualization enabled, and

Hyper-V Microsoft Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian, and briefly known before its release as Windows Server Virtualization, is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems running Windows. Starting with Windows 8, Hyper-V superseded Win ...

disabled. This 64-bit release allows the installation and usage of ARM64-v8a Android applications.

BlueStacks 5

In May 2021, BlueStacks released BlueStacks 5, still based on Android 7.1.2 but also Android 9 (Android Pie), if chosen by user.

BlueStacks X

In September 2021, BlueStacks launched BlueStacks X, a

cloud-based Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over multip ...

Android gaming platform. Driven by Hybrid Cloud technology, BlueStacks X is powered by now.gg, a sister company to BlueStacks.

Minimum requirements

Current minimum requirements for BlueStacks App Player 5 for Windows are:

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

or higher, 4 GB of

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, 5 GB of disk space, and an

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

processor. BlueStacks clashes with the BitDefender antivirus software. Current minimum requirements for BlueStacks for macOS are:

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit Integer (computer science), integers, memory addresses, or other Data (computing), data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing unit, CPUs and arithmetic logic unit, ALUs are those ...

macOS Sierra macOS Sierra (version 10.12) is the thirteenth major release of macOS (formerly known as and ), Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. The name "macOS" stems from the intention to uniform the operating syste ...

or higher, 4 GB RAM, 8 GB disk space,

Intel HD Intel Graphics Technology (GT) is the collective name for a series of integrated graphics processors (IGPs) produced by Intel that are manufactured on the same package or die as the central processing unit (CPU). It was first introduced in 201 ...

5200 or higher graphics processor, and an Intel or AMD processor. BlueStacks does not yet not support computers with

Apple M1 Apple M1 is a series of ARM architecture, ARM-based system-on-a-chip, systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) Apple silicon, designed by Apple Inc. as a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) for its Mac (computer), Mac desktop compu ...

chips,

macOS Monterey macOS Monterey (version 12) is the eighteenth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. The successor to macOS Big Sur, it was announced at WWDC 2021 on June 7, 2021, and released on October 25, 2021. m ...

, or

macOS Ventura macOS Ventura (version 13) is the nineteenth and current major release of macOS, Apple's desktop operating system for Mac computers. The successor to macOS Monterey, it was announced at WWDC 2022 on June 6, 2022, and launched on October 24, 2 ...

References

Android (operating system) Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Android emulation software MacOS Internet software Windows Internet software Companies based in Campbell, California Software companies established in 2009 2009 establishments in California Software companies of the United States