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.
Well yes, but also no.
Whenever you search for a solution to your problem, it stems from the realization that something is a problem. But sometimes, you have a thing which has been done for a longtime, it was a problem with no solution and you’ve had to accept that. How would you determine one day that things can be done differently and better without constantly reevaluating everything? It’s not realistic.
In my view, it is a perfectly reasonable question to ask “what problem does waydroid solve?” To figure out if you have that issue and you didn’t know of this solution.
Sorry, just my 2 cents.
Also, Learning is Fun, so here I have a new toy, let’s have fun seeing what I can learn to do with it, then - as you say - that might solve a problem or improve a thing I hadn’t thought of before.
But… I have all these tools, and no imagination!
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!
Reminds me that my daughter wanted to play Toca Life World on her PC. So I guess I would use it for that. As soon as I have the energy to do it.
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?
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.
if you want netflix witjh DRM stuff like offline downloads waydroid can do it I think via the android app…
You need to use a waydroid-utils script to install “widevine” for drm.
This is a solution i’ve tested for someone else not me;
I think it works, but it’s not been rigorouly road tested.Posssibly other DRM services will work if you can tolerate that type of thing.
My guess is that the main use for it is android app development and testing.
2FA app, in my case aegis, and a few games
There aren’t any 2FA apps for desktop?
Yeah. You’d have to pry keepassxc from my cold dead hands st this point. Passwords + TOTP, cross platform, just a datafile.
Yes there are for example by gnome authenticate
*Gnome Authenticator
Yes there are for example by gnome authenticate
Using the Apple Music client
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.
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.
I use it for some banking apps and online shops that require the android app for using coupons.
Used to use it for Apple Music but Cider 2 does what I want now, especially since Apple started locking down AM on rooted devices (of which Waydroid basically is) for no good reason.
Cider doesn’t support lossless, but then again neither does the version of android supported by waydroid currently
I use it to run the Sky App to stream football.
The only options are a windows app or an android app (since you can’t watch in the browser) and I couldn’t get the windows app to work with WINE.
The android app runs fairly well with waydroid, although it occasionally runs into some hiccups.
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…
