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Slow Android emulators to test Android programs may be a thing of the past on my current Windows system. I downloaded and installed Windows Subsystem for Android. It's a convenient way to test out apps you've created without having to resort to installing VirtualBox and Android x86 or using other alternatives such as Qemu or some of the very slow Android app emulators.

If you want to try out other Android apps on your Windows system, you can do that as well. It may not look like there's a wide variety of apps to choose from at first glance. Windows Subsystem for Android comes with Amazon Appstore instead of Google Play store. I've seen some reports of getting Google Play store working but it doesn't seem worth the effort and really isn't necessary. If you're just going to test your own apps, you don't need an entire app store. However, it is fairly easy to get F-Droid installed on Windows Subsystem for Android. Most of the apps from F-Droid work very well in an emulator. F-Droid had more than enough apps for my needs. Also, there are other repositories such as IzzyonDroid that can be added to F-Droid giving even more options to choose from. Finally, there are sites, such as APKPure, that will allow you to download apk files directly. Once you have the apk file, you can install the app yourself.

The basics for installing apk files in Windows Subsystem for Android follow. First, download a copy of the Google Android platform tools for Windows. adb is the program that is required from the platform tools. Start up an Android app, any Android app, in Windows Subsystem for Android. This makes sure that Windows Subsystem for Android is currently running. At the command line, type:
adb connect 127.0.0.1:58526

Once a successful connection is made, most apk files can be installed from the command line using a command similar to the following:
adb install file.apk
Substitute the actual name of the apk file for file.apk in the command.

What if you have an xapk file instead of an apk file? Rename it to a zip extension. Use a tool like unzip to extract the files in the xapk. Use the command adb install-multiple with a list of the extracted apk files.

That's all there is to it. Once that's done, you can easily install Android apps and run them on Windows. I found some actually run better on Windows than on a phone. However, some did not fit the screen well and some required Bluetooth which is not yet supported in Windows Subsystem for Android. Still, you can run quite a nice selection of apps and you can use it to test your own Android apps as you develop them.