May sound like a strange thing to want to do, but I am finding it quite useful having Bambu Handy running on my Mac - as I like the fact that you can full screen the camera view - rather than being restricted to a window in Bambu Studio.
I tried running the actual Bambu Handy app from the App Store but couldn’t get it to work - even though my Mac is an M1.
So instead I downloaded Android Studio, created a virtual tablet, then installed Bambu Studio on that. The same method would also work for a PC I guess.
Now just for viewing streams I have the option of using Bambu Studio, Bambu Handy, or both.
Example screenshot attached of both running at the same time on different printers
I’m trying to understand the use case for using Handy on a desktop system. Could someone elaborate on why this might be preferred when Bambu Studio is far richer in features and, most importantly, usability? I’m genuinely curious to hear your perspective.
Personally, I rely on Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) and Bluestacks on my desktops and devices like the Surface Book and Surface Pro, but never by choice. I do so only when I am forced to because there is no desktop version of the app.
For me the main benefit is the ability to get the camera feed larger - almost full screen if you go full screen within the handy app, plus then resize the android window up.
A second benefit is a fairly easy way of having multiple instances of camera windows on the same desktop that can easily be resized to cover a lot of the screen.
Not saying this is the only way to do it - just thought it might be of interest.
Thanks for your post. I can confirm your method works on windows 11. MY first shot failed; I created an Android 36 tablet and got a message "This app isn’t 16 KB compatible. . . " This means the app can’t cope with 16K page access to memory. Creating an Android 15 tablet worked like a dream. Just the full screen camera makes it worthwhile.
Admittedly I am mostly doing what you suggest - 2 x 12 Inch iPads for Bambu Handy Screens, 3 Screens on Mac, with two or three instances of Bambu Studio. (mostly for initiating prints on different Printers / Nozzle Sizes), plus also running Fusion and Safari.
But just for reference - installing Android Studio on a Mac is pretty easy. One step to install, One step to create Tablet, then just start Tablet, install Bambu Handy, signing and then you are up and running.
I haven’t used the Android instances on Mac for a while - but will retry them in the next few days.
Having better control of the Screen Size and Layout from BambuStudio would of course remove most of the advantages that come from using Android.
you’re emulating an entire mobile operating system to use what is to be brutally honest a rather terrible application you could just be using on literally any mobile device; many of which have the capability of casting and being controlled remotely as well as sending its video over usb (not just with usbc dp alt mode out but also scrcpy.
you could’ve just gotten obs and captured the window of bambu studio and just cropped it so the video feed is visible.
there are so, so, SO many other ways you could’ve done this that aren’t a complete waste of cpu cycles and electricity. i’m sorry. no amount of explanation will make anything you say sound any less absurd.
i cant believe im constantly getting ding’d with captchas for the high crime of using firefox meanwhile yall out here running android VMs to use the app on a PC.
its excruciatingly easy to do this. i didnt even have it installed and i did this just as an example (and left part of the UI there to prove a point since i don’t even bother with the horrible camera and thus covered it up ages ago).
I’ve played a bit using OBS, RTSPS streams, VLC, etc. to see the camera in Windows. I could usually see the camera - once. The next time I tried, it did not work and I would give up in frustration. Probably my fault for just following someone’s instructions and not getting a full understanding of how it all works.
My Samsung Galaxy has a feature called DeX that views and controls apps from my PC. Each app has its own window within the DeX window. I can use it to run Handy and resize the video all the way up to full screen. Widening the app window pushes the controls off-screen and requires scrolling down to reach them. If the video becomes wider than half of the DeX window, the controls are not available at all.
Using DeX might be an option if I had a need for 100% full screen video, but I’ve never seen the point. The video window in full-screen Studio covers ~70% of my screen and at any size is only good enough to detect major print failures. I have no hope of detecting small faults from the streaming video, the resolution is just not good enough.
