ReDroid. Playing Android games in containers on Linux PC, with GPU Acclelration

中文版

ReDroid (Remote anDroid) is an open source and self-hosting “cloud phone” solution. By running Android in containers on Linux PC, we could access Android desktop by using Scrcpy. And the container could be accessed remotely.

Here is my demonstration of what “self-hosting cloud phone” looks like. In this video, I install Scrcpy client on iPhone and connect to Linux PC using Zerotier to play Android games remotely. (sorry my video is in Chinese)

ReDroid is also one of the few solutions to run Android APP on Linux with open source software. Many Android simulators, not to mention cloud phones, are closed source. In contrast, ReDroid is an open source solution except for the ARM translator. Even better, ReDroid supports GPU acceleration plus ARM translations, so you can play more mobile 3D games!

ReDroid is much light-weight and easy to deploy than Android-x86 VM.

If you ask me, there is already a similar, container-based solution, which is known as Waydroid for playing Android games. Why do I choose ReDroid over Waydroid? Well freak Nvidia. Waydroid does not work on Nvidia GPU.

In this article, I will discuss how to use ReDroid to play mobile games on Linux PC. We will setup a container, and add ARM translator + Google Service Framework to the ReDroid image for the best experience.

1. Prerequisites

If you want to use ReDroid to play mobile games, it is recommended that you have at least 8GB of RAM on your PC, because sometimes ARM translator will take up a lot of RAM when translating ARM to x86 instructions.

There are installation instructions for all Linux distributions of ReDroid on Github, include WSL.

Since I am using Arch Linux, I have to change the kernel to linux-zen. After installing the linux-zen kernel, update the GRUB options. Reboot and select linux-zen kernel in Advanced Options of GRUB menu.

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# If you have an Nvidia driver, remember to replace it with the DKMS version
sudo pacman -R nvidia
sudo pacman -S nvidia-dkms
# Make sure binder_linux-dkms is not installed.
yay -R binder_linux-dkms

# Install linux-zen kernel
sudo pacman -S linux-zen linux-zen-headers
sudo mkinitcpio -p linux-zen
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Install Docker to run the container.
Install ADB and Scrcpy. Scrcpy now includes sndcpy.

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sudo pacman -S android-tools
sudo pacman -S scrcpy

＊ If you want a graphical Scrcpy frontend with key mapping, you can install QtScrcpy instead.

2. Launch ReDroid

Most computers are x86 architecture, and can only run x86 version of Android APP. However, many mobile games only have ARM version, so ReDroid needs a ARM translator.

The redroid:11.0.0-latest and redroid:12.0.0-latest images released by the author of ReDroid have built-in libndk, an ARM translator developed by Google. From what I test, Android 11 image is the stable version, and the Gapps can be isntalled, so we will take Android 11 as an example.

Create a directory for storing your data. Create docker-compose.

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mkdir ~/redroid
cd redroid
vim docker-compose.yml

Fill in the following

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version: "3"
services.
  redroid.
    image: redroid/redroid:11.0.0-latest
    stdin_open: true
    tty: true
    privileged: true
    ports: "5555:5555
      - "5555:5555"
    volumes.
    # Data is stored in the current directory
      - . /redroid-11-data:/data
    command.
    # Enable GPU hardware acceleration.
      - androidboot.redroid_gpu_mode=auto
    # libndk related parameters
      - ro.product.cpu.abilist0=x86_64,arm64-v8a,x86,armeabi-v7a,armeabi
      - ro.product.cpu.abilist64=x86_64,arm64-v8a
      - ro.product.cpu.abilist32=x86,armeabi-v7a,armeabi
      - ro.dalvik.vm.isa.arm=x86
      - ro.dalvik.vm.isa.arm64=x86_64
      - ro.enable.native.bridge.exec=1
      - ro.dalvik.vm.native.bridge=libndk_translation.so
      - ro.ndk_translation.version=0.2.2

Start the container

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sudo docker compose up -d

Connect to the local ReDroid using ADB:

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adb connect localhost:5555

# If it doesn't connect, use the following command to see what's going on inside the container.
sudo docker exec <container ID> logcat
sudo docker logs <container ID> logcat

Run Scrcpy to connect to the Android desktop:

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scrcpy -s localhost:5555 --audio-codec=raw

This will bring you to the Android desktop.

3. Install Google Service Framework (GAPPS)

The author says that Google Service Framework is proprietary software and cannot be built-in in ReDroid, so you have to install it by yourself. The first method is to recompile the Android image. Tthe second is to install OpenGApps manually.

The first method is not recommended, it’s time consuming and the GApps compilation tutorial provided by the author has problems that the gapps can’t be detected by other apps.

Here I choose the second method: manual installation of gapps. Reference: Install GApps Manually - Google Groups

Go to OpenGapps. Download Android 11 GApps with x86_64 architecture, and choose the minimized pico version.
Unzip it and you will see the following directory

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open_gapps-x86_64-11.0-pico-20220503
├── Core
├── GApps
├── META-INF
├── Optional

Create a folder named system under open_gapps-x86_64-11.0-pico-20220503
Next, extract the .lz files in the Core and GApps directories and move the APK in the system directory to the corresponding installation directory. For example, the GoogleTTS directory under GApps/googletts-x86_64/nodpi/app/ should be placed in /system/app.
So the directory structure under system should look like this:

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system
├── app
│   ├── GoogleCalendarSyncAdapter
│   │   └── GoogleCalendarSyncAdapter.apk
│   ├── GoogleContactsSyncAdapter
│   │   └── GoogleContactsSyncAdapter.apk
│   ├── GoogleExtShared
│   │   └── GoogleExtShared.apk
│   └── GoogleTTS
│       └── GoogleTTS.apk
├── etc
│   ├── default-permissions
│   │   ├── default-permissions.xml
│   │   └── opengapps-permissions-q.xml
│   ├── permissions
│   │   ├── com.google.android.dialer.support.xml
│   │   ├── com.google.android.maps.xml
│   │   ├── com.google.android.media.effects.xml
│   │   ├── privapp-permissions-google.xml
│   │   └── split-permissions-google.xml
│   ├── preferred-apps
│   │   └── google.xml
│   └── sysconfig
│       ├── dialer_experience.xml
│       ├── google_build.xml
│       ├── google_exclusives_enable.xml
│       ├── google-hiddenapi-package-whitelist.xml
│       └── google.xml
├── framework
│   ├── com.google.android.dialer.support.jar
│   ├── com.google.android.maps.jar
│   └── com.google.android.media.effects.jar
├── priv-app
│   ├── AndroidAutoPrebuiltStub
│   │   └── AndroidAutoPrebuiltStub.apk
│   ├── AndroidMigratePrebuilt
│   │   └── AndroidMigratePrebuilt.apk
│   ├── CarrierSetup
│   │   └── CarrierSetup.apk
│   ├── ConfigUpdater
│   │   └── ConfigUpdater.apk
│   ├── GoogleBackupTransport
│   │   └── GoogleBackupTransport.apk
│   ├── GoogleExtServices
│   │   └── GoogleExtServices.apk
│   ├── GoogleFeedback
│   │   └── GoogleFeedback.apk
│   ├── GoogleOneTimeInitializer
│   │   └── GoogleOneTimeInitializer.apk
│   ├── GooglePackageInstaller
│   │   └── GooglePackageInstaller.apk
│   ├── GooglePartnerSetup
│   │   └── GooglePartnerSetup.apk
│   ├── GoogleRestore
│   │   └── GoogleRestore.apk
│   ├── GoogleServicesFramework
│   │   └── GoogleServicesFramework.apk
│   ├── Phonesky
│   │   └── Phonesky.apk
│   ├── PrebuiltGmsCore
│   │   └── PrebuiltGmsCore.apk
│   └── SetupWizard
│       └── SetupWizard.apk
└── product
    └── overlay
        └── PlayStoreOverlay.apk

Execute the following command to obtain root privileges:

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adb connect localhost:5555
adb -s localhost:5555 root
adb -s localhost:5555 remount
adb -s localhost:5555 shell "rm -rf system/priv-app/PackageInstaller"

Then push the system directory to the ReDroid system and give it permission:

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adb -s localhost:5555 push system /
adb -s localhost:5555 shell "pm grant com.google.android.gms android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION"
adb -s localhost:5555 shell "pm grant com.google.android.gms android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION"
adb -s localhost:5555 shell "pm grant com.google.android.setupwizard android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE"
adb -s localhost:5555 shell "pm grant com.google.android.setupwizard android.permission.READ_CONTACTS"
adb reboot

Reboot the ReDroid container:

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cd ~/redroid
sudo docker compose down
sudo docker compose up -d

Starting Scrcpy

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scrcpy -s localhost:5555 --audio-codec=raw

Open System Settings → Apps, tap “Show System Apps” in the upper right corner, and turn on both Google Play Services and Play Store permissions.
Run the following command to get the Android device ID, go to Google website to register the device, wait for 30 minutes and restart the Redroid container to login to Google Play.

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adb -s localhost:5555 root
adb -s localhost:5555 shell 'sqlite3 /data/data/com.google.android.gsf/databases/gservices.db \
    "select * from main where name = \"android_id\";"'

4. Install APK to ReDroid

At present, even if you have installed libndk, the Play Store still doesn’t allow you to download apps with ARM architecture, so please install apps from APKPure or other app stores.

In addition to using the container’s internal browser to download APK, you can also use ADB to install APK to ReDroid container. For example, go to ApkMirror to download the APK of Line, and then install it with ADB:

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adb -s localhost:5555 install "jp.naver.line.android.apk"

You can also transfer files using ADB’s pull and push commands.

For screen resolution adjustment, see the instructions for ReDroid and Scrcpy.

5. How to “turn off” ReDroid

To shut down ReDroid, close the Scrcpy window and stop the container:

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cd ~/redroid
sudo docker compose down

You can then use following command to start ReDroid. the /data data for the ReDroid container is located in the ~/redroid/redroid-11-data directory, which can be used to back up files from multiple systems.

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cd ~/redroid
sudo docker compose up -d
adb connect localhost:5555
scrcpy -s localhost:5555

For your reference: Manually extracting libndk from Android Studio emulators

libndk is a proprietary software developed by Google, which is included in Android Studio emulator. According to the ReDroid author’s instructions, we can manually extract libndk from the new version of Android emulator and add it to lastest ReDroid image.

Taking Android 13 as an example, note that the author does not guarantee that this will work.

Install Android Studio and add a new virtual machine for Android 13.
Connect to the emulator via ADB

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adb devices
adb shell
adb shell

Create a archive of libndk

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{ find /system -name arm* -type d; find /system -name *ndk_translation*; find /system/etc -name *arm*; } | tar -cf /sdcard/nb.tar -T -

Create a archive of libndk.so

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find system -type l | tar -cf /sdcard/so.tar -T -

Exit ADB and transfer the above files back to the host

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exit
exit
adb pull /sdcard/nb.tar .
adb pull /sdcard/so.tar .

Add libndk.so to libndk’s archive.

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tar -xvf so.tar
find system -type l | tar -rf libndk_translation.tar -T -

Creatr a DOCKEEFILE with the following contents:

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FROM redroid/redroid:13.0.0-latest

ADD libndk_translation.tar /

Start building the Android 13 image with libndk, then the image redroid:13.0.0-libndk can be used to run the other containers.

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docker build . -t redroid:13.0.0-libndk