Side load apps onto WSA

One of the key issues with the new Windows Subsystem For Android is that it uses a cutdown version of the Amazon Appstore, and the apps are nearly all games geared for children (and MS Development Team LOL) and there is very little of use to anybody over 12 years old.

After a bit of googling, I came across links how to side load APKs.

This one is good and worked pretty much first time (second actually, as there was a popup screen which was hidden by other screens where you had to confirm something related to WSA keys).


Of course, this is only part of the equation. The next question is where do you get the apks in the first place?

There are a number of apk mirrors as stated in link above. When I first tested, I downloaded bbc iplayer from one of these sites to test above link.

The problem with these apk sites is they do not have the depth of apps as in google playstore.

You cannot get the apps direct as apks from google playstore but you can download them via a 3rd part android apps on your android device

This link explains how to do it


There are a number of 3rd party tools, and they are similar - however some have limits on usage e.g. 1 download per hour.

I found this one worked well with no limits


The basic steps (after installation) are

1) download an apk app and place in same folder with adb.exe

2) Start WSA android app

3) Turn on developer mode

4) Click in development manager to start the subsystem

5) open admin command prompt and change to folder containing adb.exe

5) connect to adb server (you will need the adb ip address which you can find from app)
e.g. adb connect 127.0.0.1:58526

6) install app e.g. adb install bbciplayer.apk

You can install several at a time, so good idea to get all apks downloaded first.

Note - all these apk apps only work with free versions to avoid piracy.

If you shut down the command prompt, you may need to start WSA again from step 2.

All three of the links above are well explained, and any moderately experience user can follow the instructions.

I now have some key apps on WSA e.g. live bus times. I know I could get that from web probably, but the apps are setup with my favourite journeys/locations.


EDIT: Some google apps are dependent on other google features like playservices and refuse to work

I came across this video


That installs full google play store etc.

It is a modified version of WSA so DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK, and make sure you have image backups etc.


EDIT 2: It was really easy - I followed youtube video up to step with google login, and when I clicked on login, it jumped straight to login - I did not have to do the adb steps to enable login. It was really just set windows to run in developer mode, download patched wsa, install it with powershell, run google playstore.

I have one minor issue i.e. one of my bus apps wants gps turned in in WSA but I have no idea how to do that. Not a big deal though - app still works.

I loved the humour of name of his app WSA-MindTheGapps_2209........

Guy had a London accent, so he would know the phrase "Mind the Gap" LOL.

@SlicEnDicE - you should check out link in post above. It is dead simple now to get google playstore in WSA.

Thanks for this, this is awesome!

cereberus said:

@SlicEnDicE - you should check out link in post above. It is dead simple now to get google playstore in WSA.

Click to expand...

Thanks, yeah I've read that. I still prefer the manual way. The steps are quite short and scripting the whole thing makes it easy. I also prefer to know exactly what has been changed/modified. Grabbing a pre-patched image lose this knowledge.

I've used the original Github instructions, which this article is based on. I've even tried to install this on Windows 10, but I accidentally grabbed a too new image, which has incompatible binaries with Windows 10.

Will retry later.

SlicEnDicE said:

Thanks, yeah I've read that. I still prefer the manual way. The steps are quite short and scripting the whole thing makes it easy. I also prefer to know exactly what has been changed/modified. Grabbing a pre-patched image lose this knowledge.

I've used the original Github instructions, which this article is based on. I've even tried to install this on Windows 10, but I accidentally grabbed a too new image, which has incompatible binaries with Windows 10.

Will retry later.

Click to expand...

Sure but if you use the patched version, you do potentially do not have to keep redoing it. Having said that, I do not know if a new version of WSA would wipe the patched version.

cereberus said:

I do not know if a new version of WSA would wipe the patched version.

Click to expand...

It will, since some of the modifications are done to the system image, which gets updated every now and then.

SlicEnDicE said:

Thanks, yeah I've read that. I still prefer the manual way. The steps are quite short and scripting the whole thing makes it easy. I also prefer to know exactly what has been changed/modified. Grabbing a pre-patched image lose this knowledge.

I've used the original Github instructions, which this article is based on. I've even tried to install this on Windows 10, but I accidentally grabbed a too new image, which has incompatible binaries with Windows 10.

Will retry later.

Click to expand...

Which method are you using for the manual way?

I've yet to get it working, for whatever reason, using a couple of different manual ways, and I'd really like to just have it working instead of having to use BlueStacks or another 'emulator'. And particularly because Microsoft decided to partner with Amazon, of all companies, for an Android install... that both ranks about as good as driving with the top down in a deluge, and rankles me to no end. I'd much rather have a Google Play Services enabled install.

I'll post a response with the link later...just woke up and going to work. Dont have the link easily available right now ( on mobile)

Remind me within 12h in case I forget.

No worries, I'm not in any sort of rush at all.

I've been following these guides. They are all pretty much the same, with only minor differences, if any.

Important thing is to uninstall any "official" WSA installs before proceeding with custom images and registration.

Yeah, I've had to go through the uninstall process numerous times lol.

So you use info from all 3? Because I'm pretty sure I tried the Appuals method to no avail, and I *think* the GitHub method failed because there was a newer version that was simply not accounted for at the time with the scripting (I may be wrong as I've only actually tried 3 times, so I'm by no means an expert at attempting it).

I'll try with the latest binaries and scripts at some point on my Windows 11 machine...I'll let you know how it goes.
Will also try to get it all working on Windows 10. This may need a bit more fiddle since the latest images/WSA binaries aren't compatible (too old or incompatible VC runtimes or something...)

I'll also try to condense the instructions a bit, so they are more easy to follow.

I am having issues with getting latest WSA Fast Branch to run with ROOTed kernel. Crashes on startup. Runs fine with the bundled kernel. I need ROOT access in order to being able to login to Google Play. Need to ADB into the installation and enable flag setenforce 0 or the Google Play Sign In button does nothing. Everything else works fine. I also saw that latest ROOTed kernel fail to build atm...

...may require to run an older version of WSA with a working patched kernel, or just wait until someone fixes the failing build.

Hmmmmm. Wonder if Magisk root would work with this?

Once Ive got a better idea of which kernels / GAPPs version works with which version of WSL for Android, I'll be more than willing to play around goof things up trying to make them work lol.

Just need that first successful install.

SlicEnDicE said:

Important thing is to uninstall any "official" WSA installs before proceeding with custom images and registration.

Click to expand...

Hi there
This works even on a VM (at least on Arch Linux with KVM/QEMU as Host). However it's very slow -- I supect that the "underpowered laptop" I'm running this on doesn't have enough "juice" for "efficient nested virtualisation" even though 100% supported in the Linux kernel (6.0.7) -- actually the laptop shouldn't even be running W11 at all -- I could only get that to work by "poodle faking" the Virtual CPU topology" in the VM config. Also only having 8GB in the laptop and 4GB for the VM was probably running it in "Starvation Mode". The physical CPU is an old i5 Gen 6. !!



But as a P.O.C (proof of concept) it does work so I'm going to try it on real decent hardware next. Dual CPU's plus 64GB RAM on that machine. I agree though Ms partnering with Amazon is akin to "Sleeping with the Devil" even though I'm quite happy to shop with them.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
This works even on a VM (at least on Arch Linux with KVM/QEMU as Host). However it's very slow -- I supect that the "underpowered laptop" I'm running this on doesn't have enough "juice" for "efficient nested virtualisation" even though 100% supported in the Linux kernel (6.0.7) -- actually the laptop shouldn't even be running W11 at all -- I could only get that to work by "poodle faking" the Virtual CPU topology" in the VM config. Also only having 8GB in the laptop and 4GB for the VM was probably running it in "Starvation Mode". The physical CPU is an old i5 Gen 6. !!

View attachment 44771

But as a P.O.C (proof of concept) it does work so I'm going to try it on real decent hardware next. Dual CPU's plus 64GB RAM on that machine. I agree though Ms partnering with Amazon is akin to "Sleeping with the Devil" even though I'm quite happy to shop with them.

Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

Something got lost in the translation LOL.

cereberus said:

Something got lost in the translation LOL.

Click to expand...

Hi there

???

What got lost. Your method worked BTW.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

???

What got lost. Your method worked BTW.

Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

So you managed to get WSL for Android installed with the Google Play Store app available and usable within the WSL so that you could easily install apps directly from the Google Play Store?