Android

Two different things people mean by “Android on my desktop”, and the honest answer is that they are different tools:

• Apps from the phone you already own — mirror its screen and use it with the keyboard and mouse. That is scrcpy, and it is the one most people want.
• Android apps with no phone at all — a container running Android. That is Waydroid, and it comes with a real caveat.

Neither is installed by default. Both are in the menu under Install > Development (Super + Space), or from a terminal.

scrcpy

omarchy-pkg-add scrcpy

Over USB, which is the easy case

Plug the phone in, turn on Developer options > USB debugging, accept the prompt the phone shows, and run:

scrcpy

That is the whole procedure. No udev rules to write, no group to join — nixarchy already ships what systemd needs for this, and programs.adb.enable is not something to add: nixpkgs made it inert, and it no longer does anything at all.

If nothing happens, look at the phone’s screen. The prompt asking you to trust this computer is easy to miss, and until you accept it adb sees a device it is not allowed to talk to.

Over Wi-Fi, which is where people get stuck

Wi-Fi is what most people actually want — the phone on the desk, not tethered — and the sequence Android 11+ requires is genuinely confusing:

• there are two ports, and they are different: one to pair, one to connect
• the pairing port changes every time you open the pairing dialog
• the pairing code is valid for seconds, not minutes
• pairing and connecting are separate steps, and nothing on either screen says so

So nixarchy wraps it:

omarchy-pkg-add android-tools   # adb, which scrcpy needs for Wi-Fi

One time per phone, pair it. On the phone: Settings > Developer options > Wireless debugging > Pair device with pairing code. Leave that dialog open, and on the desktop:

nixarchy android pair

It finds the phone itself, asks for the six digits, and tells you plainly if it failed — an expired code and a mistyped one look identical to adb, so it says both are possible rather than pretending to know.

Every time after that, with Wireless debugging on:

nixarchy android connect
scrcpy

The other commands

forget disconnects; it cannot un-pair. The phone holds the other half of that trust, and revoking it under Wireless debugging > Paired devices is what actually revokes it.

If discovery finds nothing

Every guide online says to run adb mdns services. On NixOS that prints:

adb: mdns is not supported by this version of adb.

nixpkgs builds android-tools without an mDNS backend, so adb cannot browse the network at all. This is not something you can fix by enabling a service — the gap is inside adb.

nixarchy android does not use it. It asks avahi instead, which nixarchy already runs, and which can see exactly what adb cannot. So discovery works here even though the command every tutorial names does not.

If it still finds nothing, the usual cause is that the pairing dialog is closed. Wireless debugging being on is enough to connect, but pairing advertises only while that dialog is on screen.

You can always skip discovery and type the address the phone shows:

nixarchy android pair 192.168.1.74:41234
nixarchy android connect 192.168.1.74:33811

Waydroid

nixarchy-service-enable waydroid

Waydroid runs Android in a container, sharing your kernel — so it needs no phone, and it is fast, because nothing is emulated.

That is also its limitation, and it is worth knowing before you install it: apps compiled only for ARM will not run, because your CPU is x86 and nothing here translates between them. Most large apps ship an x86 build and are fine; many smaller ones do not and simply fail to install.

We do not ship an ARM translation layer. That is upstream’s to solve, and no wrapper on this side changes it.

Which one

scrcpy if you have the phone — it is your real apps, your real logins, and your real notifications, and there is no compatibility question at all.

Waydroid if you do not, and if the apps you need publish an x86 build.