Android support

[GarboMuffin]

2026 status

There is no plan to add this to the normal packager at this time. Here are some third-party guides you can follow instead - these are made by other people so we can't vouch for their quality.

• https://blog.kenzieshane.my.id/2025/07/how-to-generate-android-application.html
• https://cst1229.eu.org/files/twandroid.html
• Fundamentally, all you need is a WebView wrapping an HTML file generated by the packager. I know people have a lot of thoughts about these things, but this is simple enough that language models can feasibly produce the code for it that you could then import into Android Studio.

The nature of Android apps makes this significantly harder to support than equivalent options on Windows/Linux because Android apps must be cryptographically signed. That adds a lot of technical complexity and it also means everyone packaging a project needs to have a good way to keep track of these keys or else people will lose the ability to ship updates. We'd really rather not deal with that.

Additionally, starting later this year, Google is going to make installing a non-Google Play app substantially more difficult: https://developer.android.com/developer-verification

Either:

• You and everyone that wants to run your project has to enable the hidden developer options menu and wait 24 hours to enable installing apps from third-party stores, or
• You share your government ID with Google and then actually code sign the app yourself.

Supporting Android in the same way we do Windows/Linux is becoming far more difficult over time, not easier

[micahlt]

Interesting... it seems like this would be hard to do without a virtual machine running gradle in the cloud.

[GarboMuffin]

The idea would be that it outputs the source code that a user would manually compile, or something like that.

There's also Cordova

[micahlt]

Interesting concept! Cordova, however, still utilizes Gradle under the hood.

[AwesomeKalin]

You could output a Cordova project that the user then compiles themselves

[SurvivCreator]

@GarboMuffin Have you considered outputing .apk files similar to how website 2 apk outputs .apk from a standalone HTML file.

[SurvivCreator]

The website is https://websitetoapk.com
The problem it has to be a standalone file. Uploading a folder with assets and the HTML file separately doesn't work...

[SurvivCreator]

Do you think this is possible in the future @GarboMuffin ?

[GarboMuffin]

It seems that outputting a valid APK with a signature valid enough to be sideloaded is a very involved process, so that won't be happening any time soon

Telling people to install Android Studio and build it themselves is probably viable

[hello-smile6]

It seems that outputting a valid APK with a signature valid enough to be sideloaded is a very involved process, so that won't be happening any time soon

Telling people to install Android Studio and build it themselves is probably viable

There's always v86, could you build in a VM?

[PPPDUD]

@GarboMuffin Can we close this now? I feel like this either isn't active enough anymore or it is taking an awful while to consider.

Edit: Never mind, it seems like Garbo is working on it right now!

[GarboMuffin]

Issues are closed when they've either been fixed, we decide it won't be implemented, etc. We don't close them for just taking a long time.

[PPPDUD]

Comment hidden.

…

On Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 2:49 PM GarboMuffin ***@***.***> wrote: Issues are closed when they've either been fixed, we decide it won't be implemented, etc. We don't close them for just taking a long time. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#2 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AZTWPZICQH2TJTUURB6DK7LVVBC2ZANCNFSM4SJQOEPQ> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[PPPDUD]

Is this in progress still? And, if so, when do you think it will come out?

[GarboMuffin]

The volunteer that was working on this (me) happens to have other priorities at the moment. I don't know