How to use Visual Studio Code on an Android device?

Question

I have Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 and it has cool features to replace laptops, but it is unfortunately running Android OS, and not many development apps are available for Android.

Is there an option to run VS Code at least on an Android device?

Answer 1

The open-source version of VS Code is called code-server. To run it on Android (without root) you will need:

Termux from F-Droid as changes to the Google Play Store policies are no longer compatible with Termux releases.

2023 Update

For an easier install use the Termux-User-Repository

From: https://github.com/coder/code-server/issues/5745

pkg install tur-repo

pkg install code-server

Old Instructions

Once running Termux you will need to install a bunch of packages as code-server is an Electron app and needs support from nodejs.

pkg install nodejs

pkg install yarn

Per the Termux NodeJS wiki you should probably have installed:

pkg install build-essential

pkg install python

As they are needed for building native extensions.

And finally install code-server itself.

yarn global add code-server

warning installing code-server takes a while

code-server is now installed and will be the back-end for your front-end which will be a Chromium based browser, like Chrome for Android or Microsoft Edge.

code-server

You'll probably want to run the server in the background like code-server &. The ampersand puts the process in the background.

At that point you'll get some logs about where to find the password.

Open up a browser, as I was using Samsung DeX I used Samsung Internet, connect to 127.0.0.1:8080 and enter password.

In my case I used cat ~/.config/code-server/config.yaml to find out what was configured.

As you can see in the screenshot, even the MS Python plugin seems to work (for now).

A Few Caveats

• code-server is not Microsoft Visual Studio Code The summary is that not all plugins are supported, YMMV.

• I'm using Termux and code-server with Samsung DeX so I don't have any keyboard issues that others have encountered.

Answer 2

VS Code does not yet exist for Android, so there's no way to run it for now. There are some other good editors though, such as CodeAnywhere that you may be able to use in the meantime.

Answer 3

There are two ways to use Linux on Android so we can use VS Code :

• First easy way (Virtual Network Computing) (VNC):

  1. Install a Linux distro via "Termux"

  pkg update -y && pkg install proot wget tar pulseaudio -y && wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AndronixApp/AndronixOrigin/master/Rootfs/Ubuntu19/ubuntu19.sh && chmod +x ubuntu19.sh && ./ubuntu19.sh

  2. Install Linux GUI desktop environment like "Xfce".

  sudo apt-get install xfce4 xfce4-goodies -y

  3. start a VNC server on your linux.

  sudo apt-get install tightvncserver -y

  4. Open "VNC Viewer" on android to start hacking.

  you may need to do command vncserver -list to list the port

  5. Install vscode for ARM64

  6. Optional: Install NodeJS for ARM64.

  apt install nodejs

---

• Second hacky way (Linux Natively):

more info:

https://medium.com/@quantvc/running-debian-on-android-device-natively-73545c9b0757

Helpful Resources:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=studio.com.techriz.andronix

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.termux

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.realvnc.viewer.android

List of some ARM64 Hackers:

@Lemon1I @boby2001820 @NTAuthority @gus33000

Worth mentioning:

https://github.com/WOA-Project