Andarium is a new app that runs Android on iPhone and iPad, with a full LineageOS 24 system based on Android 17 stored inside the app. The public TestFlight beta is already full, so most people will have to sideload the app, and the TestFlight build does not use JIT.
Developer xieyi announced the beta on November 9 and says it can run many 3D games on modern iOS devices. The app needs an iPhone or iPad with an A14 chip or newer, and it also runs on an Apple silicon Mac in Designed for iPad mode. The code is on the Kernarium GitHub page, the Linux-on-iOS project that Andarium is built on.
Android on iPhone Runs Inside the App
Andarium bundles Android and runs a single guest system, which you create, resize and erase from the app. You can install APK files and move files in and out of the guest’s storage, and the settings let you turn on Retina mode, the gyroscope and the microphone.
Under the hood, Andarium runs a User-mode Linux kernel compiled to native arm64 code, so the kernel itself is not emulated. Programs inside the guest run through a threaded interpreter. Graphics go through KosmicKrisp, which translates Vulkan 1.4 to Metal, and OpenGL ES 3.2 works through Zink.
Introducing Andarium: Android emulator for iOS, available in TestFlight beta. With a real user-mode Linux kernel and Vulkan support, it can run many 3D games on modern iOS devices. Join TestFlight beta: https://t.co/S9auDxAFXm Source code: https://t.co/6Vg5JaZuKj https://t.co/4X5lpdWsea
— xieyi (@imxieyi) November 9, 2026
The app checks for Metal 4 at launch and will not start Android on a chip without it. H.264 and HEVC video use the hardware encoder and decoder through VideoToolbox.
Andarium follows other projects that push heavy software onto the iPhone. Madeira lets you run Windows games on iPhone through Wine, and Henge puts macOS on iPhone with its own emulator.
TestFlight Is Full and Has No JIT
The TestFlight beta has 10,000 tester slots, and all of them are taken. You can sideload the IPA from the project’s GitHub releases instead, where the latest build is 1.0 Build 9 Beta.
The IPA needs the Increased Memory Limit and Extended Virtual Addressing entitlements when you sideload it. The sideloaded build also supports experimental JIT through StikDebug.
JIT compilation is the iOS feature emulators use for speed, and it only works while a debugger is attached. With JIT on, Android’s boot, app launches and background work run several times slower, while a long single-process computation runs faster. The TestFlight build is interpreter only, so this trade-off applies only to the sideloaded build.
Android Pauses When You Leave the App
Andarium has no background mode, so Android runs only while the app is in the foreground and pauses when you leave it. The iPhone interface is portrait only, while on an iPad Android can rotate its own display.
The amount of RAM you give the guest decides how stable it is on your device. Android needs at least 1.5 GiB, new guests default to at most 4 GiB, and a guest above the safe size for its vCPU count is likely to be closed by iOS. The app warns you when you set the memory too high.
The free storage on your device also controls the session, since Andarium pauses the guest when less than 1 GiB is free and lets you resume once at least 1.5 GiB is free.
You can join the beta through the Andarium TestFlight page if a slot opens, or download the IPA from the Kernarium releases page, and the source code is under GPL-2.0-or-later.
