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androidbluestacks

Running multiple instances of BlueStacks at the same time for development

I want to know if I can use two instances of BlueStacks at the same time for testing my apps with different resolutions. I drew out a rough sketch just in case to explain my theories.

Rough sketch:

Test application running at two resolutions

Emulator 1 - 720 x 1280 phone

Emulator 2 - 1280 x 768 tablet

Is it possible to run multiple instances of BlueStacks? If not, then is there a way to change to different resolutions for testing apps in various screen sizes of Android phones and tablets?

P.S. I could have used other emulators like Genymotion, or AVD from Android Studio itself, but I am on an AMD machine, which rules out the AVD from Android Studio as I believe it only works on Intel, and Genymotion is extremely slow.

In case you are wondering if my laptop is that weak, why I would want to use BlueStacks at all, let alone two instances at the same time, here are my laptop specifications:

Processor: AMD A8 Quadcore 7410 APU with 1GB Radeon R5 graphics
Graphics:  AMD Radeon R5 M335 2GB Graphics Card Built-in
RAM:       8 GB

Thanks

Solution

  • Yes, to run multiple instances of an app, see here. To summarise, here are some methods:

    • Shift-clicking the icon may work for some applications
    • Since the instance is tied to your user account, you can run as a different user
    • Isolate the instances with a program such as Sandboxie
    • Use any built-in tools of the application (see below)

    BlueStacks 4 (and BlueStacks 3) (on Windows only currently) allows running multiple instances inside BlueStacks, using the Instance Manger, but I'm not sure exactly how that works, since I have a Mac.