BlueStacks

BlueStacks is an American technology company known for the BlueStacks App Player and other cloud-based cross-platform products. The BlueStacks App Player allows Android applications to run on PCs running Microsoft Windows and macOS. The company was founded in 2009 by Jay Vaishnav, Suman Saraf, and Rosen Sharma, former CTO at McAfee and a board member of Cloud.com.

The company was announced in May 2011 at the Citrix Synergy conference in San Francisco. Citrix 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 in versions for Windows 10 and macOS. 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 was downloaded over 1 billion times. App Player features mouse, keyboard, and external touchpad 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 stream their apps to Twitch without the need for extra hardware or software.

BlueStacks released Facebook Live integration in September 2016, allowing users to stream their gameplay to their Facebook profiles, Pages they control, or Facebook Groups 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 (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 6-8x 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. A new dock and search offer a clean user interface. 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.

Development for macOS has been restarted, and version 4 is currently available from the website as of November 2019, first released for Mac in January 2019.

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

BlueStacks 5

In May 2021, BlueStacks released BlueStacks 5.

BlueStacks X

In September 2021, BlueStacks launched BlueStacks X, a cloud-based Android gaming platform. Driven by Hybrid Cloud technology, BlueStacks X is powered by now.gg, a sister company to BlueStacks.