DroidDesk: Turn an Android phone into a full Linux desktop

The Android phone in your drawer has enough silicon to run a desktop; what it lacks is a paved road. DroidDesk is a GPL-3.0 open-source project that runs a full Linux desktop on any ARM64 Android phone through Termux — it runs a desktop environment with direct kernel access rather than a terminal toy or an emulator where VS Code, LibreOffice, and Wireshark are confirmed working. The repository had 4,614 stars on November 1, 2026, is written mostly in Kotlin, and shipped v1.3.1 on October 14. Plug the phone into a monitor and it behaves like a Linux PC; unplug and the whole setup travels with it.

Core features

Plenty of guides walk you through installing XFCE on Termux; DroidDesk turns that path into a repeatable procedure. A setup script installs the full desktop inside Termux (XFCE4/LXQt/MATE/KDE), pulling GUI apps from the Termux User Repository (TUR). Tools TUR doesn’t carry — Wireshark, Metasploit — land in a Proot container with a standard Ubuntu/Debian/Kali environment, and an automatic menu sync scans what you install there and puts it straight into the desktop’s app menu, so you never go hunting through the container. The README’s tested list also includes Claude Code running in a terminal and offline local LLM inference at 5+ tokens/second with no API.

The standalone app

If manual Termux setup sounds like work, DroidDesk also ships as a standalone Android app (sideload the APK from Releases): an embedded Termux:X11 server, automatic extraction of a bundled ARM64 bootstrap, and a desktop installed for you. Without root it runs an app-private Termux userspace; with root it can run Ubuntu through chroot. Adreno GPUs get Turnip/Zink hardware acceleration; everything else falls back to Mesa software rendering.

Typical use cases

• Revive the phone in your drawer: an emergency coding machine, or a plug-powered offline box running local models in the corner.
• Security and networking learners: Wireshark and Metasploit live in the Proot container, portable without a laptop.
• If the phone supports USB-C display output, one adapter cable is a temporary workstation.

Quick start

You need an ARM64 Android phone, with Termux installed from F-Droid (the Play Store build is outdated). Monitor output takes one of two roads: a USB-C-to-HDMI adapter if the phone supports display output, or a Raspberry Pi bridge — the README ships complete scripts, including auto-launch on boot. Phone-screen-only works too via the embedded X11 server. MIUI, One UI, and stock Android 13+ may kill background processes, and the README documents the battery-optimization settings that prevent it.

Summary

DroidDesk fits anyone with an idle Android device. Set expectations by hardware — a phone SoC is still a phone SoC; Blender installs but lags, and video editing or heavy 3D are out of scope. It’s GPL-3.0 and unaffiliated with Termux upstream. For a different take on “phone as computer,” compare VirtualMacOniPad, which virtualizes macOS on jailbroken iPads. GitHub data verified November 1, 2026.