You Can Install Google Play On Windows 11 WSA With This Hack

Microsoft’s Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) is live and running on the Beta channel. As the name says, it lets you run Android apps on your Windows 11 PC. But there are a limited number of apps that it supports as there is no official way to install Google Play on WSA.

That has changed with a new hack published by a developer named ADeltaX that brings Google Play to Windows 11.

The developer detailed his method on Github and said that it’s a work in progress. You can follow the steps mentioned in his repo to install Google Play on your WSA. In addition to WSA, you need to have 7-zip and WSL 2 with Ubuntu (or any other distro) running on your Windows 11 PC.

The steps might be a bit difficult to understand for some users, but ADeltaX said they are continuously updating the repo to make them simpler. In case, you are looking for more ways, you can check out this trick that lets you sideload Android apps on WSA.

For now, there is a how-to video that you can refer to while following the steps. Keep in mind that WSA is a new offering and the hack comes from a third-party developer. So, there might be unknown risks involved.

For the uninitiated, WSA on Windows 11 only lets you download apps from the Amazon App Store as of now. Furthermore, the Amazon App Store works inside the Microsoft Store is somehow tied to the WSA. In other words, if you install Amazon App Store on Windows 11 it will also install WSA components, and the same will be removed when you delete the app store.

WSA is an attempt similar to what Microsoft has done in the case of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) that lets you run Linus distros inside Windows 10/11 PCs. Microsoft’s future plans include adding support for more third-party apps stores, for example, there are rumors of the Epic Games Store coming to Microsoft Store.