I tried Waydroid on Arch and its amazing. It runs Android apps flawlessly. And with a touchscreen device, I feel like I have an Android tablet running inside my Linux machine.
But I still don’t know what to use it for…
What apps do you use with Waydroid? What use cases do you have for it?
Don’t search tasks for a tool. Search a tool for your tasks.
Well yes, but also no.
Whenever you search for a solution to your problem, it stems from the realization that something is a problem. But sometimes, you have a thing which has been done for a longtime, it was a problem with no solution and you’ve had to accept that. How would you determine one day that things can be done differently and better without constantly reevaluating everything? It’s not realistic.
In my view, it is a perfectly reasonable question to ask “what problem does waydroid solve?” To figure out if you have that issue and you didn’t know of this solution.
Sorry, just my 2 cents.
Also, Learning is Fun, so here I have a new toy, let’s have fun seeing what I can learn to do with it, then - as you say - that might solve a problem or improve a thing I hadn’t thought of before.
Too right.
Someone needs to make a start on the “periodic table of emulators” It might as well be OP.
But… I have all these tools, and no imagination!
Minecraft Bedrock.
This is the way 😉 although the Minecraft launcher is pretty good these days running under Waydroid is considerably less hacky as it’s not having to thunk between android and Linux userspace.
I’ve found the official launcher to be terrible, laggy, unstable, and poorly designed even on windows. I don’t think it can even launch bedrock anyway, I need to use the unofficial *nix launcher and the android APK to play on a realm.
Sorry I was referring to: https://mcpelauncher.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Ah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about!
Playing Slay the Spire.
It does have a native Linux version but it doesn’t sync cross-platform. So since I like playing on the go it is nice to also be able to play at home on a bigger screen.
If it’s the Steam version, why not play through proton?
Did it work out of the box for you? Doesn’t load for me on either of my machines that have waydroid
Do you have an ARM emulator installed? I don’t think the game ships an x86 build. Other than that it just worked.
Is that what libhoudini is? I heard of it, but don’t recall if I installed it
I think so. IIRC there are a few different implementations. But if you configure any of them Android will automatically use it to run non-native apps.
if you want netflix witjh DRM stuff like offline downloads waydroid can do it I think via the android app…
You need to use a waydroid-utils script to install “widevine” for drm.
This is a solution i’ve tested for someone else not me;
I think it works, but it’s not been rigorouly road tested.Posssibly other DRM services will work if you can tolerate that type of thing.
My guess is that the main use for it is android app development and testing.
you might want to look into stremio or the servarr suite if youre having to jump through these hoops anyway
waydroid is pretty easy to get working - and I think will be usable by the actual end user once set up.
I did look at stremio but I couldn’t see a way to do the offline downloads thing on netflix.
That is a desirable feature for the person who travels a lot and they just want to have some videos for when they’re off-line or on limited bandwidth like on the train or bus.This servarr thing looks way more complex - though I admit I might be a bit too dim for it as I couldn’t figure out what it actually does.
Thanks for the suggestions though - waydroid looks easiest to meet all the needs. I’m sure someone smarter than me will have fun with that weird servarr suggetion - it does seem to have a whole lot of features.Servarr is a stack of applications that sets up a media suite. Radarr and Sonarr handle the managing of movies and TV shows, respectively. Prowlarr searches for the media through either Torrenting or Usenet. Then you’d need a downloader like SABnzbd or Deluge. Ombi is another application to handle requests and finally you’d need a streaming app like Plex, Emby or Jellyfin.
Think of it like a marionette; you’re making a bunch of services work together for one goal. Most people use docker and create a docker compose file to manage all the services. Typically the flow goes like this, a person makes a request to Ombi for something to watch. That request goes to Radarr or Sonarr, which creates a folder and populates the Metadata from IMDB. Then a request is sent to Prowlarr to find the media. Once found its sent to the downloader, like Deluge, to actually grab the media. After it’s done, Radarr / Sonarr will import the media into the correct folder. Now you’ve got a perfect collection for Plex / Emby / Jellyfish to start streaming your media. Really awesome suite once you get it up and running.
The only way I can know the monthly rent amount, is through an Android app.
That’s actually horrid. My router is android only and I thought that was bad.
That should be an ADA violation
If I was in the US.
The only thing I can truly think of is Signal. If there was a native Gtk app for signal that was near feature complete I would probably ditch Android altogether. Maybe OSMAnd~, but that’s a nice to have.
Flare isn’t feature complete but you can run it in the background for all notifications.
Yeah I know about it, but it’s so so far off from being usable as a daily driver interacting with people on Android sadly :/
I use it for some banking apps and online shops that require the android app for using coupons.
Definitely not to have android apps on a Linux tablet, because in-waydroid rotation doesn’t work, and rotating the tablet itself breaks the windowing system until you reboot the container. Issue first reported in 2021.
Reminds me that my daughter wanted to play Toca Life World on her PC. So I guess I would use it for that. As soon as I have the energy to do it.
Android does have lots of games, and some apps that aren’t as easy to use, or as good as in native linux. For example, some painting apps (krita is powerful, but can also overwhelm someone), video editors like capcut or lumafusion, audio apps. For most of everything else, there is a web browser on linux that can do the job better probably, and native apps. But overall, I’d say that Android apps aren’t really that useful on linux, because they’re mostly geared towards apps that you use on the go, while you usually sitting on a chair at home or work when you’re using linux. To be honest, most native apps now have been replaced by a web browser, so either native linux or native android apps are only useful for high end professional usages (e.g. blender, video editing, etc) rather than everyday use.
aren’t a lot of games aarch64 only? do they even support x86? I’ve attempted in the past to use waydroid for a game, but no way to install it on an x86 machine. Does waydroid support some kind of box64 layer?
There is an unofficial script that ads arm emulation. Note before anyone asks, it will not become officially supported by waydroid.
Only the ones that are written in compiling language. The ones written in java/cotlin can. Also, in x86 tablets there are special chips that have arm emulation in hardware for these compiled apps. But plain x86 desktop cpus don’t have that. So it depends what app can work and what can’t.
2FA app, in my case aegis, and a few games
There aren’t any 2FA apps for desktop?
Yeah. You’d have to pry keepassxc from my cold dead hands st this point. Passwords + TOTP, cross platform, just a datafile.
Yes there are for example by gnome authenticate
*Gnome Authenticator
Yes there are for example by gnome authenticate
Not aegis, which is what I’m used to
People with linux phones use it to run android apps: Signal because using electron is worse than waydroid for battery life, banking apps, bullshit government apps without web versions, etc. It’s terrible for battery life, but it works.
Also, thr emulated Android web browser runs much smoother than any native one
Using the Apple Music client
Ive thought about using it for bank apps so I dont have hassle if I lose the phone or it gets robbed. Has anyone tried this ?
I imagine it would fail CTS and SafetyNet. Kind of curious if shizuku works on it
Lotta people in here saying what they use it for, but the only ppl I know irl running waydroid are playing softcore gatcha games on it.
I miss Dragalia Lost
I should see what the community servers are up to
