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Trying to setup Bluestacks

I had to install Bluestacks recently, it's an Android emulator for macOS & Windows. I remember using this a few years ago & it has changed quite a bit since then.

IIRC there wasn't much to setup before, you could just install & use it. No need to setup a Google account, you could always download apks from other sources. This time I was forced to setup a Google account, there was no way to proceed without it. It had a skip option but for some reason that button didn't actually work, it brought me back to the setup.

So, I created a Google account. Google these days forces you to give a phone number, there was no way to skip this or use other verification methods. You have to give your phone number or gtfo. I was in hurry so I completed the verification & got my work done.

The application also steals user focus. Say you start Bluestacks & switch to another desktop (workspace), it'll steal focus during initialization. This was tested on macOS Catalina (v10.15.4).

Another thing I could've done was to just install stock Android on Virtualbox.