Could I upload a .apk file INTO Replit

Hey, I was just wondering if I could upload .apk files into Replit, and then run them. I was wondering how to use .apk files because .exe probably wont work due to the Replit terminal being basically linux. I want to try to upload some apps like browsers or games.
Its a simple question. If I can, that would be great.

Sadly, you cannot upload .apk files to Replit.

If this helps, please mark it as a solution.

You technically can but you’d have to have some form of Android emulator. It would most likely suffer from performance.

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You can use wine to run windows apps. But you are better off just downloading the linux version of browsers
For games you are also better off just subscribing to a cloud gaming service.
Not only are replits servers and connections not optimized for that you will likely be paying more on replit for hardware that can handle the game than a cloud gaming service.

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WINE is banned on Replit, last time I checked.

There’s not much reason it would be banned and they have almost no way to do anything about people using it if they tried to ban it anyway

Why would it not be allowed on Replit?

@9pfs1 going on my memory; this was because of pirated Among Us copies. I had a conversation with a guy on Replit who once had a YouTube tutorial on how to use wine; it worked a few months prior to talking to this guy. I had wondered how to do this again; the YT video was taken down. He told me that it was taken down because of illegal apps; specifically Among Us. I would like official confirmation that this is true so I don’t sound like an idiot right now.

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Replit employees control everything on Replit, and they could easily prevent it. For example, they could:

  • poison repls that attempt to start processes with wine in the executable path
  • remove nix derivations for wine and keep repls from installing it
  • poison repls that log text similar to what wine logs to the console or shell

Removing a useful tool just because of that isn’t worth it, it also doesn’t really affect them, there’s like no legal avenue anyone could sue replit with because wine isn’t contributing to pirating games, it’s just a windows emulator.
If he pirated among us, then his video was taken down almost certainly by the game publisher not replit.
wine doesn’t seem to be an option for replit right now anyway since it doesn’t actually run. I overlooked this but it does seem to need like special system calls or something which replit could just keep broken. It’s more likely this is just a side effect of running in a container vm and got broke by an update but if they actually went out of their way to destroy wine for no reason it just shows how replit isn’t making the brightest choices.

If Replit doesn’t take down a repl that violates copyright laws, they could be sued.

Yes, it does. It can get Replit sued.

Uhh 1. WINE stands for “Wine Is Not an Emulator” and 2. it’s allowing people to pirate games. That’s going to get Replit sued. They take copyright seriously; it’s in the ToS.

The game publisher has no reason to focus on one person. They focus on replit because it’s on replit. Then, they sue them.

It does. I tested it with Microsoft Edge; works like you’d expect. I will say it was laggy. But if I ran an illegal game, Replit could get sued. That’s why they could have banned me.

Why are you using it if it’s not allowed?

Being sued is an issue, you go out of your way to fix those kinds of problems.

TwT that’s like saying being sued is a bright choice.

Also yeah I forgot wine doesn’t emulate and instead simulates win syscalls my bad(lol its so easy to imagine it as WINdows Emulator (though you can probably argue simulating syscalls is technically also emulation)), but still needs a decent amount of permissions I guess.
But again, they can’t be sued for not taking down wine. If they pirate games on replit they are only responsible for taking down the offending users themselves.
If anyone actually tried to sue with an argument that revolved on wine being possible to use, replits legal team would laugh because at that point they are just trying to go on a crusade on any company providing the same services as replit.

They have plenty of reason, the video probably showed how to actually acquire the pirate version of the game. The fact that it was running on replit is of almost no importance compared to a video showing people how to actually get the game files free. They don’t HAVE to use replit.
It also might not have even been the publisher themselves, there’s probably some kind of bot flagging nonsense or someone else did it for them (youtube copyright system is trash so this usually works even though they technically don’t even have the authority to claim it on their behalf)

Besides there are plenty of other methods for stopping games from running on replit and banning wine achieves nothing. There are many games that support linux and I’m sure there are or will be linux pirate sources.

This is off-topic, not about uploading .apk files :stuck_out_tongue: so check PMs.

@RavenChill You can upload .apk files, but they’ll do nothing.