Linux PC games on an Android phone, running on the phone itself. No streaming, no PC, no root.
fexdroid is an Android app that starts the Linux version of Steam, and games from it, on an ARM64 phone. x86 code is translated by FEX-Emu; graphics go through Mesa Turnip, the open Vulkan driver for Adreno. The game it is built and measured with is Dota 2.
Alpha, for testers. It works on the phones below, with the limits described on this page. Expect rough edges, and please send reports: they are what moves the project.
| State | |
|---|---|
| Steam client | Installs itself from Valve on first start; sign-in, library, store, downloads |
| Installing games | From Steam, on the phone, over Wi-Fi |
| Dota 2 | Starts from Steam, online; hero demo, watching live matches and replays |
| Input | Touch, USB/Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, on-screen keys for playing by touch (new, Dota 2 layout, can be changed) |
| Sound | Yes |
| Updates | From inside the app |
| Languages | English, Romanian |
Not there yet: gamepads, a match played from start to finish on every tested phone, Samsung DeX.
| Phone | Chip | Android | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Realme GT 5G | Snapdragon 888, Adreno 660, 12 GB | 14 | Dota 2 from Steam. Replay of a real match, minute 22: 25–28 frames/s on a cool phone, 20–23 on a warm one. Ten-hero test scene: 36–44 |
| Galaxy S26 Ultra | Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, Adreno 840 | 16 | Steam and Dota 2 run; 25–32 frames/s in a match, measured with an earlier build |
Numbers are from the phones themselves, not estimates. How they were measured is in NOTES.md (in Romanian).
- A Snapdragon chip with an Adreno 6xx, 7xx or 8xx (Snapdragon 845 or newer). Other graphics processors fall back to drawing on the CPU, which is far too slow for 3D games.
- Android 12 or newer (tested on 14 and 16), 64-bit, memory pages of 4 KB (the app checks).
- 12 GB of RAM or more for Dota 2. Under the emulator the game holds 5 to 6 GB, and 3 to 4 GB of video memory, which on a phone is the same memory.
- Free space: about 5 GB for Steam, and what the game needs on top (Dota 2: about 70 GB).
The app's first screen shows a verdict for your phone.
- Download
fexdroid-legacy.apkfrom the latest release and install it. Android asks you to allow installing from your browser. - Open the app. On Home › Status, press Download and install for the Steam libraries (about 250 MB).
- Press Start Steam. The first start downloads the Steam client from Valve and takes a few minutes. Sign in with your own account.
- In Steam, install the game: Store › Dota 2 › Play Game › Install. Use Wi-Fi and keep the phone on its charger.
- Press Play.
Later versions install from inside the app.
- Heat decides the frame rate. Phones lower their processor's speed when hot; a Snapdragon 888 drops to about 40% of it. Play off the charger if you can, and take the case off.
- Memory. On a 12 GB phone, several matches in one session can exhaust memory: the game slows to a crawl and Android closes it. The app shows a warning before that. Close other apps, and restart fexdroid between matches.
- The first “Watch in-game” of a session often ends with “Overflow error”, because the map loads slower than the server waits. The second try works.
- Performance settings are in Settings › Performance. “Fast memory access for Dota 2 and CS2” gave 13% more frames in our tests; it is experimental and off by default.
In the app: Home › Send report, or Send the log on the screen shown when a game has closed. The report has the device, the app's log, the end of Steam's logs and a few self-tests. It has no passwords, but Steam's logs can name your account: read it before you post it in public. Open an issue and paste it there, with what you did and what happened.
- The app contains no files from Valve. Steam and the games are downloaded from Valve by Steam itself, with your account.
- fexdroid does not modify Steam or the games, and does nothing to or around VAC or any other protection.
- fexdroid is not affiliated with Valve, FEX-Emu or Mesa. Steam and Dota 2 are trademarks of Valve Corporation.
- We know of no account that had a problem from playing this way, but nobody outside Valve can promise what their systems decide. You play at your own risk.
the game (x86-64 Linux) → FEX-Emu translates to ARM64
↓ Vulkan calls cross to native code
Mesa Turnip (ARM64) → Adreno, through the kernel's KGSL driver
↓ picture
Xvfb (virtual X11 screen) → the app shows it and sends touch, mouse and keys back
The app carries a small Debian userland built for Android's restrictions: a patched glibc (System V shared memory and semaphores in user space, system calls Android forbids), FEX with local patches, Mesa with local patches. Everything is in patches/ and built by scripts/.
You need Linux, the Android SDK and NDK, and Docker. Start with scripts/check-host.sh, then scripts/build-payload.sh and ./gradlew :app:assembleLegacyDebug. The details and the reasons behind each decision are in PLAN.md and NOTES.md (both in Romanian; the code, comments and commits are in English).
The project's own code is under the MIT licence. The components it builds on keep theirs: see LICENSES.md.