We have talked about Google’s upcoming Fuchsia OS a lot in the last year. Google’s next-gen OS is expected to focus on privacy, and it is a completely new OS that looks and seems to work much different from Android.

Considering that Fuchsia is so different from Android, even on a technical level, everyone wondered whether the platform will support Android apps. Without being able to support Android apps, Fuchsia may not get a lot of traction. Google would have to convince millions of developers to build apps for Fuchsia devices that probably won’t have a lot of popularity at launch, so it’s kind of a big problem for the company. And if you are a Windows Phone fan, you are probably very well aware of that.

So Google is making sure it’s not making the same mistake with Fuchsia that Microsoft did with Windows Phone. Instead, Google is implementing the ability to use Android apps on Fuchsia. 9to5Google reported that the company is making a special version of the Android Runtime (ART) built to run Android apps on Fuchsia. The special version of the Android Runtime will allow developers to compile their Android apps to run specifically on Fuchsia, producing a .far Fuchsia package (aka an .apk for Android app packages).

Of course, considering Fuchsia runs on different kernels and has a lot of technical differences from Android, it’s unclear exactly how the Android Runtime will work on Fuchsia, or whether it will introduce any limitations. That remains to be seen for the time being, though as we get into 2019, we will likely get to know a lot more about Google’s future plans for Fuchsia.

Tagged with Android, Android Runtime, Fuchsia, Fuchsia OS