Android app installation on 64 bit emulators

Why this page is created

Chromium packs both 32 and 64 bit libraries inside 64 bit apks. And emulators fail to run them because doesn't handle 32 bit libraries correctly. So to install Brave application on such emulators we should install aab instead.

Instructions how to run to install aab

On Ubuntu

Prerequisites

Chromium provides all the necessary tools to install aab with the source code.

Installation

From the src folder, run these commands:

1. ./build/android/gyp/bundletool.py build-apks --connected-device --bundle=<path to aab file> --output=<path to apks file> --adb=third_party/android_sdk/public/platform-tools/adb
2. ./build/android/gyp/bundletool.py install-apks --apks=<path to apks file> --adb=third_party/android_sdk/public/platform-tools/adb

Usually <path to apks file> is the same as <path to aab file> but with extension apks.

Example of the command: ./build/android/gyp/bundletool.py build-apks --connected-device --bundle=out/android_Debug/apks/BraveMonox64.aab --output=out/android_Debug/apks/BraveMonox64.apks --adb=third_party/android_sdk/public/platform-tools/adb

On Mac OS

Prerequisites

1. Install Homebrew from https://brew.sh
2. Run command brew install android-platform-tools
3. Run command brew install bundletool

Installation

Run these commands:

1. bundletool build-apks --bundle=<path to aab file> --output=<path to apks file>
2. bundletool install-apks --apks=<path to apks file>

Usually <path to apks file> is the same as <path to aab file> but with extension apks.

Example of the command: bundletool build-apks --bundle=BraveMonoarm64.aab --output=BraveMonoarm64.apks

Important notes

Commands above assume that you have only 1 emulator (and no other devices connected) on the machine. Otherwise you will need to specify device-id param to the bundletool command.

For instance bundletool build-apks --bundle=BraveMonoarm64.aab --output=BraveMonoarm64.apks --device-id=emulator-5554.

List of ids can be found by running adb devices command.

Known issues

There is a problem with vulkan on arm64 emulators on M1 Mac. It shows annoying crash dialogs when apps starts. After closing those dialogs app works as expected.