Installation and Building

Option 1: Download a Prebuilt APK (Recommended)

Go to the GitHub Releases page, download the latest APK package, and install it directly.

After installation, make sure to grant the app Root access and all files access permission (you will be guided through this during initial setup).

Option 2: Build from Source

If you prefer to compile it yourself, you need the following environment.

Prerequisites

• Android Studio, SDK 37
• NDK, CMake 3.22.1+
• JDK 11 or higher

Build Steps

git clone https://github.com/Droid-VM/DroidVM.git
cd DroidVM
git submodule update --init --recursive
./gradlew assembleRelease

The build output (APK) is located in the app/release/ directory.

Windows Users

On Windows, use gradlew.bat instead of ./gradlew:

.\gradlew.bat assembleRelease

If JAVA_HOME is not set on your system, you can temporarily specify the JBR bundled with Android Studio on the command line:

$env:JAVA_HOME = "C:\Program Files\Android\Android Studio\jbr"
.\gradlew.bat assembleRelease

Debug Build

For development and debugging, you can use:

./gradlew assembleDebug

Installing to a Device

After building, install via ADB:

adb install -r app/release/app-release.apk

Or copy the APK to your phone and install it manually.

Upgrading

To upgrade, just install the new APK version over the old one; your VM configurations and disk images will be preserved. The first time you launch a new version, the Setup wizard may re-extract and update the bundled binaries (crosvm / QEMU / kernel, etc.).