Anbox

anbox - Android emulator. Anbox puts the Android operating system into a container, abstracts hardware access and integrates core system services into a GNU/Linux system.

It works! Sorta...

Installation

For Mint Linux installation instructions see our Snapcraft guide. Once installed it is located here:

• /home/nicolep/snap/anbox

Make sure you run anbox.appmgr at least once after installing Anbox. Just type the following from your command prompt:

~ $ anbox.appmgr

There are other methods of installation.

If you have installed anbox using snap on ubuntu, you can find Android folders at place

/var/snap/anbox/common/data/media/0

• sudo permission required to access

Limitations

You can install Android apps but they need to be in android's architecture-neutral bytecode or in the same native architecture as your main OS, because there's no emulator, Anbox runs in a container, thus interecting straight with your current kernel. So you won't be able to install an ARM app on your PC which uses an Intel x86 / 64 processor. These processors work differently than the ARM processor in your phone. However, there are other factors such as the consideration you could use a Raspberry Pi with an ARM processor, or use further emulation on your PC to function between Anbox and your kernel.

One solution is using libhoudini to allow you to run ARM apps on your PC with Anbox.

Update (12/2020) Tested and Verified with some success getting Google Play Services aka Google Store running in addition to libhoudini on anbox using a script written in Python that simplifies installation for users. Linux Uprising has the story "Anbox: How To Install Google Play Store And Enable ARM (libhoudini) Support, The Easy Way" which outlines the process. The script is very easy to interpret if you have any programming knowledge as it is recommended to look at it before you execute it for the security of your system.

Usage

In current distributions of Ubuntu and Mint (including Mint 18.3 and up) you can launch anbox from the command prompt (or from the search menu):

 anbox.appmgr

• MENU -> OTHER -> ANBOX APPLICATION MANAGER

To install applications you must download each app APK and install it manually using adb.

If using Snapcraft you will find the installed apps here:

• /var/snap/anbox/common/data/app

Install an apk file / install an app

To install an app, in this example the Our Groceries App, do the following:

1. navigate to the directory where the apk file you downloaded resides. say ~/Downloads

cd ~/Downloads

2. use the following command to install app to Anbox Android

adb install com.headcode.ourgroceries-1.apk

3. find and execute the app using Anbox Application Manager

 anbox.appmgr

Some apps tested and confirmed to work include: Dolphin Web Browser and Our Groceries app.

Google Play

Anbox doesn't come with Google Services as Google Services can't be installed on an unregistered device including your emulator.

Troubleshooting

Failed to install : Failure [INSTALL_FAILED_NO_MATCHING_ABIS: Failed to extract native libraries, res=-113]

This error:

Failed to install battlefieldmars.apk: Failure [INSTALL_FAILED_NO_MATCHING_ABIS: Failed to extract native libraries, res=-113]

You are trying to install an app which was written for the ARM processor architecture on your Intel based device, Anbox on your PC. Some examples are: Chrome web browser and Firefox web browser.

Try libhoudini

binaries

running with snapcraft

• /snap/anbox/158/usr/bin/anbox container-manager --data-path=/var/snap/anbox/common/ --android-image=/snap/anbox/158/android.img --daemon
• /snap/anbox/158/usr/bin/anbox session-manager
• /var/snap/anbox/common/containers default
• /system/bin/anboxd

$ mount|grep anbox
/var/lib/snapd/snaps/anbox_158.snap on /snap/anbox/158 type squashfs (ro,nodev,relatime)
/var/lib/snapd/snaps/anbox-installer_24.snap on /snap/anbox-installer/24 type squashfs (ro,nodev,relatime)
nsfs on /run/snapd/ns/anbox.mnt type nsfs (rw)

photos and files not visible

Photos and files copied to subfolders of /var/snap/anbox/common/data/media/0 are not visible to the Android environment.

status: unresolved.