How to download Free Fire on PC

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Free Fire’s over-the-top style and manic, fast-paced gameplay have made it a standout title in the battle royale genre. After all, there’s nothing more thrilling than barely squeaking out a win in the close-quarters bullet mayhem of the final moments of a round. But as great as Free Fire is on a smartphone or tablet, there’s no getting around the hard truth: shooters are made to be played with a mouse and keyboard.

Well, we’ve got good news for you! You can play Free Fire on your PC. And once you’ve felt what it’s like to pop the opposition with the speed and precision of your mouse, you’ll never want to go back to touch controls again. Here’s the complete guide on how to download Free Fire on PC.

Download an Android emulator

The odds are good your laptop or computer can’t natively run Android apps, so you’ll need some special software to play Free Fire on PC. That software is known as an Android emulator. Simply put, an Android emulator creates an isolated sandbox where it “recreates” the software environment of the Android operating system. You can run and operate Android apps and games from within that sandbox.

So, you’ll need an Android emulator if you want to run Android games on your PC. They’re simple enough to find — a quick Google search will return tons of different options for you to choose from. There are so many choices that you may find yourself scratching your head, wondering which one to go with. 

If this is your first time installing an Android emulator, or you’re going to be playing on a MacBook, we recommend BlueStacks or NoxPlayer. Both offer excellent compatibility and performance, support macOS, and require minimal setup to get up and to run. The downside is that both BlueStacks and NoxPlayer are known for being ad-heavy. Still, it’s nothing you can’t ignore, and the ads thankfully don’t display once you’re actually in a game.

The install process for both BlueStacks and NoxPlayer is straightforward. Once you’ve got your emulator of choice set up, it’s time to fire it up for the first time!

Download Free Fire from the Google Play Store

The next step is downloading Free Fire from the Play Store, exactly as on your smartphone. Here’s a quick rundown of the process in BlueStacks (it works the same way in NoxPlayer):

  1. Open the Google Play Store app from your emulator’s desktop
Click on the Play Store icon on your emulator’s desktop (this example uses BlueStacks).
  1. Click on the search bar and type in “Free Fire”. Then press Enter or click the Search icon.
  2. Select Free Fire in the list of apps, then click the Install button. Or click the Install button on Free Fire in the suggested app results.
Search for Free Fire in the Play Store. Then, click the “Install” button to install it onto your emulator.
  1. Once the download is complete, click the “Open” button on the Free Fire app page, or return to your emulator’s desktop and click the Free Fire icon to launch the game.

Now, you’re ready to start dominating your enemies on the battlefield!

BlueStacks and NoxPlayer will have a default mouse and keyboard setup already prepared, so you can hit the ground running. But if you’d rather customize your controls, both emulators have robust customization tools that offer complete control over how you play — including the ability to play with a controller.

Read on to find out how you can set up and modify your control scheme for maximum comfort.

Setting up your controls

If you have previous experience playing shooters on PC, the default controls in BlueStacks and NoxPlayer are pretty intuitive. However, Free Fire does have some game-specific commands that you’ll want to review to get the most out of your gaming experience, including binds for actions like crouching and going prone, leaning, and switching weapons.

You’ll find the Advanced Keymapping tool on the right-hand bar in both BlueStacks and NoxPlayer. It’s the icon that looks like a keyboard.

Both BlueStacks and NoxPlayer have Advanced Keymapping, which creates new control schemes or edits existing ones. Clicking on the button will allow you to configure controls for the currently open app, so make sure you have Free Fire running before entering the Advanced Keymapping tool.

When you open up Advanced Keymapping, you’ll see an overlay that’s something like the image below:

You can drag-and-drop commands onto your screen from the Advanced Keymapping tool, then bind them to keys, mouse clicks, or controller buttons.

That’s a lot of symbols! Don’t worry — this guide will help you make heads and tails of it all.

After clicking the Advanced Keymapping tool, the right sidebar will expand, revealing a bunch of symbols, like this:

Each of these symbols represents a specific touch-based action that you can perform in your app. You can drag and drop these actions onto any location on your emulator’s screen, then bind that action to a key or button. When you press that bound button, it will perform that action on that location of the screen.

For instance, if you drag the “Tap spot” symbol onto the Fire button, then assign it to your spacebar, you can fire your gun by pressing the spacebar. Experiment with the different actions available in Advanced Keymapping.

Once you’ve become familiar with setting up and binding actions, you’ll be able to do some cool things with a single keypress. For instance, you can do a quick 180-degree spin by binding the “Swipe” to a key. Or you can perform multiple, rapid single-fire shots with the “Repeated tap” action. You can even automate actions and input sequences with the Macros feature in both BlueStacks and NoxPlayer (but that’s a topic for another time).

Run circles around your foes with mouse and keyboard

Now that you’ve learned how to download Free Fire on PC and your controls all set up the way you like them, it’s time to start dominating the servers. Hop online and show the world your skills!