Introduction

Sarab runs an Android system on your Linux desktop as ordinary processes under your own user. The apps you install show up in your app launcher. Open one and it gets a window of its own, next to your other windows, with your clipboard, your notifications and your dark mode.

There is no root anywhere: no daemon running as root, no setuid helper, no container runtime and no virtual machine. Android is walled off from the rest of your session with Linux namespaces, it pauses itself when you are not using it, and it boots in a couple of seconds when you are.

Sarab is alpha. It is built and used daily on x86_64 Arch Linux with Hyprland and an AMD GPU, and tested on Ubuntu 24.04 with GNOME. Other setups are untested. Please report what you find.

What you get

• An Android app in its own window. Each app opens in a phone-sized window. Hyprland and sway float it by themselves; other tiling compositors can with one window rule.
• Your desktop, not a second one. The clipboard is shared both ways, Android’s notifications arrive as your desktop’s, apps get launcher entries with their icons, and Android follows your desktop’s dark mode.
• Nothing running when nothing is open. A minute after the last app window closes, every Android process is frozen: no CPU use and no wakeups. Opening an app wakes it again in milliseconds.
• One command. sarab does everything, shaped like docker or podman: sarab start, sarab install app.apk, sarab app ls, sarab logs -f.
• Google Play, if you want it. The image comes with Google apps, and one registration step makes the Play Store work. There is also an image without them.

How it differs

Sarab boots the same Android image that Waydroid publishes, LineageOS 20 (Android 13), unchanged. What is different is everything on the host side, rebuilt in Rust. Waydroid runs Android in an LXC container, started as root. Sarab runs it rootless, in user namespaces it sets up itself, as your user, so the question “can Android take over my machine’s root?” has the answer no, short of a kernel bug. Sarab is not affiliated with the Waydroid project.

Being rootless is not the same as being a sandbox. Android still reaches your display and your audio, and the image is signed with publicly known test keys. Read Security before installing apps you do not trust.

What it cannot do yet

The short version: x86 apps only, no audio or video playback inside apps yet, one app on screen at a time, and a GPU that Mesa drives. Limitations has the whole list.

Where to go next

• Requirements: what your machine needs.
• Installation: build, install and start Android in three commands.
• Installing apps: APKs, bundles, and the Play Store.
• How it works: what happens when you run sarab start.