I tried Waydroid on Arch and its amazing. It runs Android apps flawlessly. And with a touchscreen device, I feel like I have an Android tablet running inside my Linux machine.
But I still don’t know what to use it for…
What apps do you use with Waydroid? What use cases do you have for it?
Don’t search tasks for a tool. Search a tool for your tasks.
But… I have all these tools, and no imagination!
Playing Slay the Spire.
It does have a native Linux version but it doesn’t sync cross-platform. So since I like playing on the go it is nice to also be able to play at home on a bigger screen.
If it’s the Steam version, why not play through proton?
Did it work out of the box for you? Doesn’t load for me on either of my machines that have waydroid
Do you have an ARM emulator installed? I don’t think the game ships an x86 build. Other than that it just worked.
Is that what libhoudini is? I heard of it, but don’t recall if I installed it
I think so. IIRC there are a few different implementations. But if you configure any of them Android will automatically use it to run non-native apps.
Minecraft Bedrock.
This is the way 😉 although the Minecraft launcher is pretty good these days running under Waydroid is considerably less hacky as it’s not having to thunk between android and Linux userspace.
I’ve found the official launcher to be terrible, laggy, unstable, and poorly designed even on windows. I don’t think it can even launch bedrock anyway, I need to use the unofficial *nix launcher and the android APK to play on a realm.
Sorry I was referring to: https://mcpelauncher.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Ah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about!
The only way I can know the monthly rent amount, is through an Android app.
That’s actually horrid. My router is android only and I thought that was bad.
Android does have lots of games, and some apps that aren’t as easy to use, or as good as in native linux. For example, some painting apps (krita is powerful, but can also overwhelm someone), video editors like capcut or lumafusion, audio apps. For most of everything else, there is a web browser on linux that can do the job better probably, and native apps. But overall, I’d say that Android apps aren’t really that useful on linux, because they’re mostly geared towards apps that you use on the go, while you usually sitting on a chair at home or work when you’re using linux. To be honest, most native apps now have been replaced by a web browser, so either native linux or native android apps are only useful for high end professional usages (e.g. blender, video editing, etc) rather than everyday use.
The only thing I can truly think of is Signal. If there was a native Gtk app for signal that was near feature complete I would probably ditch Android altogether. Maybe OSMAnd~, but that’s a nice to have.
Flare isn’t feature complete but you can run it in the background for all notifications.
Yeah I know about it, but it’s so so far off from being usable as a daily driver interacting with people on Android sadly :/
Definitely not to have android apps on a Linux tablet, because in-waydroid rotation doesn’t work, and rotating the tablet itself breaks the windowing system until you reboot the container. Issue first reported in 2021.
People with linux phones use it to run android apps: Signal because using electron is worse than waydroid for battery life, banking apps, bullshit government apps without web versions, etc. It’s terrible for battery life, but it works.
Also, thr emulated Android web browser runs much smoother than any native one
2FA app, in my case aegis, and a few games
Honestly: I cannot have the Instagram app on my phone (both for privacy and for addiction) - I have it installed on Waydroid and the fact that it works like 50% of the way keeps me from using it more than a couple times a week.
You already answered this in your question description :) With a touchscreen laptop and Linux and WayDroid you can have a Linux tablet. (Unfortunately (?) the choice of a DeGoogle ROM for Android tablets is minimal and you never know when the ROM developer will buy a new phone, change their life priorities and drop the ROM development) Compared to an Android phone you’d have a much larger screen. What do I use WayDroid for personally ? Just to test some programs, to see what’s new in F-Droid, and sometimes use LibreTube.
If you like LibreTube check out Grayjay. It similarly lets you privately browse and watch YT content, while also being able to subscribe and make playlists, but it’s killer feature is pooling all your subscriptions across different platforms into one feed. Ie having your Patreon, YouTube, Twitch, etc all in one app.
Why should one use libretube over freetube? What special features does it provide?
I wonder if Pokemon Go would work on waydroid…
F1tv, Amazon music and that’s about it more or less. I’ll occasionally use it on my steam deck for some android games but I don’t play more than maybe 3 or 4 android games total and that’s rare.
Can you explain the benefit of using F1TV app this way, instead of the browser? I’m genuinely curious if this gives a better experience in some way
I use Multiviewer, having track maps and timing is sick
Yeah, Multiviewer is a huge PITA to use on steam deck since it gets wiped on updates, Brave, my browser of choice is explicitly blocked from the web version and I’m used to the android interface so it seemed right on my main PC since I already needed to do it this way on my deck.
Ive thought about using it for bank apps so I dont have hassle if I lose the phone or it gets robbed. Has anyone tried this ?
Lotta people in here saying what they use it for, but the only ppl I know irl running waydroid are playing softcore gatcha games on it.
I miss Dragalia Lost
I should see what the community servers are up to
