Run Linux containers on Android — no root required.
Podroid spins up a lightweight Alpine Linux VM on your phone using QEMU and gives you a fully working Podman container runtime with a built-in serial terminal.
| Containers | Pull and run any OCI image — podman run --rm -it alpine sh |
| Terminal | Full xterm emulation with Ctrl, Alt, F1-F12, arrows, and more |
| Persistence | Packages, configs, and container images survive restarts |
| Networking | Internet access out of the box, port forwarding to Android host |
| Self-contained | No root, no Termux, no host binaries — just install the APK |
- arm64 Android device
- Android 14+ (API 34)
- ~150 MB free storage
- Install the APK from Releases
- Open Podroid and tap Start Podman
- Wait for boot (~20 s) — progress is shown on screen and in the notification
- Tap Open Terminal
- Run containers:
podman run --rm alpine echo hello
podman run --rm -it alpine sh
podman run -d -p 8080:80 nginxThe terminal is powered by Termux's TerminalView with full VT100/xterm emulation wired directly to the VM's serial console.
Extra keys bar (scrollable):
ESC TAB SYNC CTRL ALT arrows HOME END PGUP PGDN F1–F12 - / |
- CTRL / ALT are sticky toggles — tap once, then press a letter
- SYNC manually pushes the terminal dimensions to the VM
- Terminal size auto-syncs on keyboard open/close so TUI apps (vim, btop, htop) render correctly
- Bell character triggers haptic feedback
Forward ports from the VM to your Android device:
- Go to Settings
- Add a rule (e.g. TCP 8080 -> 80)
- Access the service at
localhost:8080on your phone
Rules persist across restarts and can be added or removed while the VM is running.
Android App
├── Foreground Service (keeps VM alive)
├── PodroidQemu
│ ├── libqemu-system-aarch64.so (QEMU TCG, no KVM)
│ ├── Serial stdio ←→ TerminalEmulator
│ └── QMP socket (port forwarding, VM control)
└── Alpine Linux VM
├── initramfs (read-only base layer)
├── ext4 disk (persistent overlay)
├── getty on ttyAMA0 (job control)
└── Podman + crun + netavark + slirp4netns
Boot sequence: QEMU loads vmlinuz-virt + initrd.img. A two-phase init (init-podroid) mounts a persistent ext4 disk as an overlayfs upper layer over the initramfs. Packages you install and containers you pull are written to the overlay and survive reboots.
Terminal wiring: The app cannot fork host processes, so TerminalSession is wired to QEMU's serial I/O via reflection — keyboard input goes to QEMU stdin, QEMU stdout feeds the terminal emulator. Terminal dimensions are synced to the VM via stty so TUI apps see the correct size.
Networking: QEMU user-mode networking (SLIRP) puts the VM at 10.0.2.15. Port forwarding uses QEMU's hostfwd, managed at startup via CLI args and at runtime via QMP.
Requires Docker with multi-arch support:
./docker-build-initramfs.sh./gradlew assembleDebug
adb install -r app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apkDockerfile # Multi-stage initramfs builder (Alpine aarch64)
docker-build-initramfs.sh # One-command build script
init-podroid # Custom /init for the VM
app/src/main/
├── java/com/excp/podroid/
│ ├── engine/ # QEMU lifecycle, QMP client, VM state machine
│ ├── service/ # Foreground service with boot-stage notifications
│ ├── data/repository/ # Settings + port forward persistence
│ └── ui/screens/ # Home, Terminal, Settings (Jetpack Compose)
├── jniLibs/arm64-v8a/ # Pre-built QEMU + libslirp
└── assets/ # Kernel + initramfs (generated)
GNU General Public License v2.0