Podroid

byChar0n · Root & System

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8.0

android

AI summary

Run a real Alpine Linux VM with its own kernel on Android without root. Supports Podman, Docker and LXC with proper behavior. Version 1.2.8 adds boot-auto-start, up to 16 GB RAM and 512 GB storage, 2048 port-forward rules, and improved DNS resolution through the phone's resolver. Uses AVF or QEMU backends.

Generated by AI. May contain inaccuracies.

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About this app

Run Linux containers and a full Linux desktop on your Android phone. No root.

A real Alpine Linux VM with its own kernel - not a chroot or proot trick - so Podman, Docker and LXC behave exactly like they do on a server.

virtual machine linux container open source developer tools offline

What's new

v1.2.8Sep 16, 2026

New
Start the VM automatically when the phone boots (Settings, off by default), and start or stop it from automation apps with the com.excp.podroid.action.START_VM / STOP_VM intents. RAM sizes up to 16 GB. The list only offers what the phone can actually spare, so a 6 GB device still sees 512 MB to 2 GB while a 24 GB device gets the full range. Storage sizes up to 512 GB, again limited to the free space on the phone, and storage can now be grown after setup from Settings (never shrunk; the larger size is picked up on the next VM start). The port-forward list holds 2048 rules instead of 128, and podroid-forward clean (plus a Clean button in Settings) removes every user rule at once. The guest kernel can now serve NFS, act as an iSCSI target, and mount binderfs.
Fixes
The guest could not resolve hostnames on some phones even though ping 8.8.8.8 worked. The VM now uses the phone's own DNS resolver (including a VPN's) with public resolvers as fallback, so apk add and podman pull work on mobile data, Wi-Fi, and through a VPN. The backend shown on the home and status screens is the one actually running, not the one selected in Settings. With the selection on Auto, a phone without AVF now correctly reports QEMU. Raising the storage size used to grow the disk image without the VM ever seeing the extra space; the guest now resizes its filesystem on the next start. The RDP and mirror-mode recipes in the guide now match what the guest actually does, and the desktop guide explains that setup-desktop also installs and enables a display manager (harmless here, but unnecessary) and how to switch it off. Broad reliability and documentation hardening across networking, the Settings screen, and the guide.
Known limitations
Starting the VM at boot keeps Podroid's foreground service running from the moment the phone starts; on phones with aggressive battery management, whitelist Podroid or the VM may be stopped in the background. Multi-core AVF VMs still reboot on Pixel 8 and later; the AVF backend stays single-core until the guest kernel gains the missing CPU-frequency driver. A fix is planned.