Getting Android Studio Running on ChromeOS Containers via Project Crostini

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A few hours ago, I made a blog post on how to get Firefox running on ChromeOS via a Project Crostini Container. I started getting questions asking if Android Studio works. Today I will be taking this one step further by providing instructions to get Android Studio Running on the Google Pixelbook via a ChromeOS container.

If you did not read the introduction to ChromeOS Containers Blog Post, take a few moments to give it a read before continuing. Furthermore this will currently only work for the Google Pixelbook at this time.

Getting Android Studio Running

Follow the steps below to get Android Studio running on your Chromebook.

  1. Access a ChromeOS Shell (Ctrl + Alt + T)
  2. Create a container by running
    • vmc start devvm
  3. Provision Debian by running (replace <username> with your unix username (lower case, no spaces)
    • run_container.sh –container_name=stretch –user=<username> –shell
  4. Upgrade the Debian Install by running
    • sudo apt-get update
    • sudo apt-get upgrade
  5. Install Android Studio by running the following
    • sudo apt install -y gcc-multilib g++-multilib libc6-dev-i386 qemu-kvm mesa-utils
    • sudo apt install -y wget unzip
    • wget https://dl.google.com/dl/android/studio/ide-zips/3.1.1.0/android-studio-ide-173.4697961-linux.zip
    • sudo unzip -q android-studio-ide-173.4697961-linux.zip -d /opt/
    • rm android-studio-ide-173.4697961-linux.zip
  6. Launch Android Studio
    • /opt/android-studio/bin/studio.sh
  7. Complete the Android Studio Setup Wizard (See Screenshots)

Yup, it is really that easy.

Relaunching Android Studio

Whenever you close your terminal window, you can follow the steps below to re-launch Android Studio.

  1. Access a ChromeOS Shell (Ctrl + Alt + T)
  2. Start your container by running
    • vmc start devvm
  3. Start Debian by running (replace <username> with your unix username (lower case, no spaces)
    • run_container.sh –container_name=stretch –user=<username> –shell
  4. Launch Android Studio
    • /opt/android-studio/bin/studio.sh

Screenshots

2 thoughts on “Getting Android Studio Running on ChromeOS Containers via Project Crostini”

  1. Do you have a high resolution screenshot? Am wondering how the font rendering is performing with this setup. I assume under the hood it’s using an X11 server displaying to a wayland composer?

    Reply

    • Yes, you should be able to right click on all of the images and view them in a new tab to see them at high resolution.

      It is actually xwayland

      Reply

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