Run Linux containers on your Android phone — no root required.

Podroid spins up a lightweight Alpine Linux VM using QEMU and gives you a fully working Podman container runtime with a built-in terminal. Install the APK, tap Start, and you're running containers in under a minute.

• Podman with crun, netavark, and slirp4netns — no root daemon, rootless by default
• Persistence — packages, configs, and container images survive restarts via overlayfs
• Internet access out of the box via QEMU SLIRP networking
• podman run --rm -it alpine sh — works immediately after first boot

• Full VT100/xterm emulation via Termux's TerminalView
• Real PTY — proper job control, signal handling, and escape sequences
• 114 color themes — Dracula, Nord, Solarized, Tokyo Night, Catppuccin, Gruvbox, and 108 more
• 13 terminal fonts — JetBrains Mono, Fira Code, Cascadia Code, Source Code Pro, Hack, and more
• Mouse support — full CSI mouse tracking for TUI apps (btop, htop, mc, vim)
• Extra keys — ESC, TAB, CTRL, ALT (sticky toggles), arrows, HOME, END, PGUP, PGDN, F1–F12, and common symbols
• Auto-resize — TUI apps (vim, btop, nano) update dimensions on keyboard open/close
• Bell feedback — haptic vibration on bell character

• Port forwarding — expose VM services to your Android device with one tap
• Protocol support — TCP, UDP, or both
• Runtime control — add and remove forwards while the VM is running via QMP
• Service presets — one-tap setup for common services:
  • Pi-hole (DNS + web), Nginx, Gitea, Grafana
• Built-in SSH — connect from any SSH client on port 9922

• Configurable size — 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, or 64 GB
• Downloads sharing — mount your Android Downloads folder into the VM via virtio-9p

• ARM64-native — runs as aarch64 on your device's CPU via QEMU TCG
• Multi-core — configurable CPU count (1–N based on your device)
• Allocatable RAM — 512 MB default, adjustable to your workload
• GICv3, MTTCG — hardware acceleration for the emulated interrupt controller and multi-threaded TCG

1. Install the APK from Releases
2. Open Podroid and tap Start VM
3. Wait ~20 seconds — boot progress shows in the notification
4. Tap Open Terminal
5. Run containers:

podman run --rm alpine echo hello
podman run --rm -it alpine sh
podman run -d -p 8080:80 nginx

Android App
├── Foreground Service          ← keeps the VM alive
├── PodroidQemu engine
│   ├── libqemu-system-aarch64  ← QEMU (TCG, no KVM)
│   ├── podroid-bridge          ← PTY ↔ serial.sock relay
│   └── QMP socket              ← port forwarding + VM control
└── Alpine Linux VM
    ├── initramfs (read-only base)
    ├── ext4 disk (persistent overlay)
    ├── Dropbear SSH (port 22)
    └── Podman + crun + netavark + slirp4netns

Boot: QEMU loads a Linux kernel + initramfs. A two-phase init mounts a persistent ext4 disk as an overlayfs upper layer. Everything you install or pull persists across reboots.

Terminal: Termux allocates a real PTY for the terminal session. A native bridge binary relays data between the PTY and QEMU's serial socket. Mouse events and resize signals flow through the same path, so TUI apps work correctly.

Networking: QEMU user-mode networking (SLIRP) gives the VM 10.0.2.15. Port forwards are managed via QEMU's -netdev hostfwd at startup and QMP at runtime.

Requires Docker with multi-arch support and Android SDK.

# Build the VM initramfs and kernel (requires Docker)
./docker-build-initramfs.sh

# Build QEMU and the terminal bridge binary (requires Docker)
./build-qemu-android.sh

# Build the APK
./gradlew assembleDebug

Install: adb install -r app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk

• arm64 Android device (most phones from 2018 onward)
• Android 8.0+ (API 26)
• ~150 MB storage for the app, plus your chosen VM disk size

• QEMU — machine emulation
• Alpine Linux — VM base
• Podman — container runtime
• Termux — terminal emulator
• Limbo PC Emulator — QEMU on Android groundwork

GNU General Public License v2.0