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.
- Font size slider - drag to resize text live.
- Color themes - over 100 themes including Dracula, Nord, Solarized Dark and Light, Tokyo Night, Catppuccin, Gruvbox, Monokai, and the full base16 family. You can also import any theme via a terminalcolors.com URL.
- Fonts - 13 built-in fonts including JetBrains Mono, Fira Code, Cascadia Code, Hack, Iosevka, and Victor Mono. Import any
.ttffile for a custom font. - Extra-keys toggle - show or hide the row of shortcut keys below the terminal.
- Haptics toggle - enable or disable vibration feedback on key presses.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| RAM | 512 MB / 1 GB / 2 GB / 4 GB | Memory allocated to the VM. 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 | Set at first-run setup | The size of the persistent overlay image (storage.img). Set during setup; changing it requires a full VM reset. |
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 | Add TCP, UDP, or both forwarding rules. Changes apply live via QMP without a VM restart. Can also be managed from inside the VM with podroid-forward (see Networking). |
| Downloads sharing | Toggle | Shares the Android Downloads folder into the VM as a virtio-fs mount. May be a no-op on some AVF devices. Can be unstable on some QEMU configurations; disable it if the VM crashes on boot. |
| 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. |
Advanced
| Setting | Control | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Backend | Auto / AVF (KVM) / QEMU (TCG) | Auto picks AVF when the device supports it, otherwise 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 | Wipes all VM data: the persistent overlay (storage.img) is deleted and recreated on next boot. Does not affect app settings. |
Diagnostics
Open Settings → About for diagnostics tools:
- Export diagnostic log - writes and shares a
log.txtcontaining app version, device info, current settings, VM state, port-forward rules, AVF capability probe results, recent app logcat, and the full guestconsole.log. Attach this to bug reports. - Verbose AVF logging - toggle that adds extra detail to AVF-related log output. Useful when investigating AVF-specific issues.
- AVF (pKVM) diagnostic - runs the capability and permission probe immediately and shows the result, so you can confirm whether your device meets AVF requirements without attempting a boot.
Podroid is free software (GPL). Docs for v1.2.5. Found something inaccurate? Open an issue.