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A Hamsan
A Hamsan

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Show DEV: APK Desktop Bridge – A lightweight, bloat-free Android APK & Local AI runner for Windows (.NET 10)

#showdev #opensource #dotnet #android

Testing Android .apk files or running mobile Local AI apps on Windows usually means dealing with a frustrating trade-off: either installing massive 5–10 GB commercial emulators packed with ads and background bloatware, or manually configuring command-line SDK tools, environment variables, and ADB scripts every time.

To solve this, I built APK Desktop Bridge—a lightweight, 100% open-source Windows desktop application built with C# and .NET 10 WPF that wraps Google's official Android virtualization tools into a clean, zero-bloat graphical interface.

🔗 GitHub Repository: Hamsan2013/APK-bridge--Windows-

📥 Latest Beta Installer (.exe): Download v1.0.0.0.2 Pre-Release

⚡ What It Does

APK Desktop Bridge acts as a direct bridge between Windows File Explorer and a pre-configured landscape Android 14 (x86_64) virtual tablet.

Key Features in the v1.0 Beta:

  • 🖱️ Native Windows .apk File Association: Double-clicking any .apk file in Windows File Explorer or on the Desktop automatically opens it inside APK Desktop Bridge, verifies the package, and prepares it for installation.
  • 📲 Drag-and-Drop Emulator File Transfer: Need to move large .gguf AI models, ZIP archives, or test documents into the emulator? You can drag and drop any file from Windows straight into /sdcard/Download/, /sdcard/Documents/, or a custom Android path via ADB push.
  • 🐙 Built-In GitHub Release Browser & HTTPS Downloader: Search public GitHub repositories (owner/repo) to fetch .apk release assets directly, or paste a direct https:// URL with SHA-256 checksum validation.
  • 🛡️ Pre-Install Package Inspection: Automatically checks ZIP magic bytes (50 4B 03 04), verifies AndroidManifest.xml, computes SHA-256 hashes, and inspects native library ABIs (x86_64 vs arm64-v8a) before sideloading.
  • 📦 Offline Tool Bundling: The Inno Setup installer comes pre-bundled with adb.exe, cmdline-tools, and the core emulator engine using lzma2/ultra64 compression—so ADB works out of the box without manual PATH setup.
  • 🟢 Real-Time ADB Polling: A background DispatcherTimer checks device connectivity every 3 seconds and locks the emulator into 720p or 1080p landscape mode.

🛠️ Tech Stack & Architecture

  • Frontend / UI: .NET 10 WPF (Dark-mode dashboard)
  • Backend Services: Asynchronous C# wrappers around adb.exe, sdkmanager, avdmanager, and emulator.exe
  • CI/CD & Packaging: Automated GitHub Actions workflow compiling a self-contained win-x64 binary and packaging it with Inno Setup 6
  • Storage Separation: App binaries live in C:\Program Files\APK Desktop Bridge, while SDK tools, virtual devices, and logs are isolated in %LOCALAPPDATA%\APK Desktop Bridge so runtime updates never require Administrator privileges.

🚀 Try It Out & Feedback Welcome!

The project is currently in Pre-Release Beta, and I'm actively testing edge cases and improving the UI.

If you test Android APKs on Windows or experiment with local mobile AI apps:

  1. Grab the APKDesktopBridge-Setup-v1.0.0.0.2.exe installer from the Releases page.
  2. Let me know in the comments (or via GitHub Issues) if you run into any bugs or have feature suggestions for the final v1.0 release!

If you find the project useful, a ⭐ on the GitHub repo would mean a lot!

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