Terminal & settings

The Podroid terminal is built on the Termux engine: xterm-256color, true color, mouse tracking, and live resize. This page covers the Quick Settings drawer in the terminal and every option in the main Settings screen.

Terminal Quick Settings

Tap the tune icon in the terminal's top bar to open the Quick Settings drawer. All changes apply immediately without restarting the VM.

Settings reference

Appearance

Setting Control Notes
Dark theme Toggle Switches the app UI between light and dark. Applies immediately.
Dynamic color / Material You Toggle Uses your wallpaper's colors as the app accent palette. Android 12+ only.
Language System default / English / 中文 (Chinese) App interface language. Defaults to following the device language; changing it re-renders the UI right away.

VM resources

Restart required

RAM, CPU, and Backend changes take effect only after the VM is restarted. These controls are locked (grayed out) while the VM is running. Port-forward and SSH changes apply live without a restart.

Setting Control Notes
Load balance Toggle When on, Podroid automatically tunes CPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth for the device, and the manual controls below are managed for you. Turn it off to set CPU, RAM, and storage manually.
RAM 512 MB to 16 GB Memory allocated to the VM. The options run from 512 MB up to 16 GB, filtered to what the device can spare (total memory minus about 3 GB of headroom); small phones always keep at least 512 MB / 1 GB / 2 GB. Requires a VM restart. Locked while running.
CPU cores 1 / 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 vCPU count passed to QEMU. Requires a VM restart. On AVF, any value above 1 uses all available host cores.
Storage size 2 GB to 512 GB, grow only The size of the persistent overlay image (storage.img). Chosen during setup and can be increased here later; the list only offers sizes that fit the phone's free space, and it can never be shrunk. A larger size takes effect on the next VM start. Locked while the VM is running or Load balance is on.
Start VM on boot Toggle Off by default. When on, the VM boots after the phone starts - on a PIN-locked phone, after the first unlock. Automation apps can also start and stop the VM with the intent actions com.excp.podroid.action.START_VM (activity intent) and com.excp.podroid.action.STOP_VM (broadcast).

Connectivity

Setting Control Notes
SSH Toggle Exposes dropbear on host port 9922 (forwarded to guest port 22). Default credentials: username root, password podroid. Injects and removes the 9922 forward live via QMP.
Port forwards Add / Remove / Clean all Add TCP, UDP, or both forwarding rules. Changes apply live via QMP without a VM restart. Clean all removes every user rule after a confirmation; the app-managed SSH, display, and audio rows are unaffected. Can also be managed from inside the VM with podroid-forward (see Networking). The rules the app manages itself - SSH, and the desktop's screen and audio channels - are listed above your own as read-only entries, so a port that is already taken is visible before you try to reuse it.
Bandwidth limit Mbps value / Unlimited Caps the VM's network throughput. Managed automatically when Load balance is on.
Downloads sharing Toggle Shares the Android Downloads folder into the VM at /mnt/downloads: virtio-9p on QEMU, an in-process 9p2000.L server over vsock on AVF. Can be unstable on some QEMU configurations; disable it if the VM crashes on boot. The AVF path is stable.
USB passthrough Toggle Passes a physically attached USB device (Wi-Fi adapter, storage, serial adapter, audio interface) into the VM, with no root. QEMU backend only. It adds a USB controller at boot, so the toggle takes effect only after a VM restart and is locked while the VM is running. When it is on, each device you attach prompts for permission once and then appears inside the guest while the app runs. A Wi-Fi adapter also needs firmware installed inside the guest before it will associate, since the guest image ships none: apk add linux-firmware-rtw88 for RTL8821AU/8812AU/8814AU dongles, apk add linux-firmware-rtlwifi for RTL8188/8192 ones, then replug the adapter.

Advanced

Setting Control Notes
Backend Auto / AVF (KVM) / QEMU (TCG) Auto picks AVF when the device supports it, otherwise QEMU. Forcing AVF on a device that cannot run it falls back to QEMU, and the app says so: the AVF chip gains a caption with the reason, the Home screen shows a notice, and Status appends "AVF unavailable, running QEMU". Requires a VM restart. See the Backends page for details.
Extra QEMU args Editable text field + Reset Appended verbatim to the QEMU command line. Default:
-cpu max,sve=off,pauth-impdef=on -accel tcg,thread=multi,tb-size=512 -object rng-random,id=rng0,filename=/dev/urandom -device virtio-rng-pci,rng=rng0 -overcommit mem-lock=off
Extra kernel cmdline Editable text field + Reset Appended to the kernel command line. Default:
loglevel=1 quiet mitigations=off
Reset VM Button Clears all application data: the persistent overlay (storage.img), your settings and your port forward rules. The app closes and returns to a freshly installed state, so the setup wizard runs again. There is no way to keep settings while wiping only the VM.

Diagnostics

Open Settings → About for diagnostics tools:

Podroid is free software (GPL). Docs for v1.3.0. Found something inaccurate? Open an issue.