Google Play Store Is Coming To Chrome OS, With All The Android Apps.

Google first brought the ability to run Android apps on Chrome OS with a project called the "App Runtime for Chrome (ARC)." Google built an Android runtime on Chrome OS and partnered with select developers to port a handful of Android apps. Now it sounds like Google is ready to unleash millions of Android apps onto the platform by bringing the entire Play Store to Chrome OS.

The Google Play Store is home to thousands of apps and games, as well as eBooks, movies, and songs. You can purchase the media from pretty much any device just by visiting play.google.com/store in a web browser. But up until now, the native app for the Play Store only ran on Android and it would only let you download and install apps on Android.

In the Chrome OS subreddit, users are reporting some interesting behavior in their Chromebooks. "TheWiseYoda" noticed that when the settings first load up, an option flashes on screen that reads, "Enable Android apps to run on your Chromebook." The option immediately disappears, so it's not possible to click on its confirmation box. We were able to replicate this on our second-gen Chromebook Pixel running the developer build.

After some hunting in the Chrome OS source code, TheWiseYoda found a few strings in this file (starting at line 6522) that mention the arrival of Google Play on Chrome OS. The most important message seems to be this one:

<message name="IDS_ARC_OPT_IN_DIALOG_DESCRIPTION" desc="Description of the opt-in dialog for Android apps.">

Choose from over a million apps and games on Google Play to install and use on your <ph name="DEVICE_TYPE">$1<ex>Chromebook</ex></ph>.

</message>

The appearance of the setting doesn't come as much of a surprise given that Google has spent the past couple of years bringing Android and Chrome OS closer together. At the end of 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company would combine the two operating systems as early as this year. If today's news is anything to go by, Google may simply integrate the useful features from each OS instead.

The Play Store for Chromebooks should launch in the very near future. Version 51 of the Chrome browser just hit the beta channel last week and the Chrome OS version will follow shortly.  Just last week, a Google designer detailed Material Design for Chrome OS as part of version 50, though that has yet to roll out to the stable channel.

Version 51 of Chrome should be coming out soon so we can get more information on this new feature, and since Google I/O is right around the corner, expect the company to talk about the Play Store on Chrome OS in much more detail.