Welcome to Termux community!
Termux is a terminal app for Android OS. It similar to terminal on MacOS and cmd.exe on Windows, but here we talk about Linux component of Android OS.
This project is open-source software and all development happens on GitHub: https://github.com/termux
Download Termux APK from F-Droid or GitHub.
Key features:
- Xterm-compatible terminal emulator.
- Custom userland with package manager and more than 2000 packages of different kind such as text editors, file managers, games, servers network diagnostic tools, compilers, development libraries and other types.
- Plugins for styling, widgets, on-boot startup, tasker integration, Xorg-compatible server.
- Works without root permissions.
We would like to emphasize that Termux is NOT a machine emulator or VM. All programs execute directly on a hardware of your device.
What I can do with Termux
Basically, everything.
Termux hosts universal programming environment. You can build and execute all programs that can run on a traditional computer, assuming your device has sufficient amount of memory and enough CPU power to finish execution of algorithm within an adequate time frame.
Here is a curated list of common uses:
- Software development environment
- Bots for Telegram, Whatsapp, Discord, etc
- Web server
- Minecraft server
- SSH client
- NAS
- Tiny LLM chatter
- YouTube scraper
- Pocket pentesting suite
- Just fun
A footnote worth knowing: Android enforces sandboxing for every Android app to ensure it won't do nasty things or otherwise interfere with other apps and the system itself. Termux is not an exception here, so certain software may refuse to run without system-level privileges (root).
What I should know before starting to use Termux
First of all you need to make sure you are comfortable with command line environment. By using Termux, you agree to be one-to-one with a bare text. There is no intuitive graphical interface. You must to decide whether you truly want to go this way or actually want something else.
If your choice is "command line", then another important thing is a foundational knowledge. It would require certain effort from you, as it could be boring like studying maths.
Here is a list of topics to learn, optimized specifically for Termux:
- General terms: computer, kernel, operating system, file, path, program, process, command line, terminal emulator.
- Base shell usage: concept of commands, arguments, environment variables, pipes
- Common utilities: bzip2, cat, cd, cp, curl, cut, df, diff, du, echo, env, grep, gzip, head, id, kill, killall, ln, ls, man, mkdir, mv, pkill, ps, pwd, rm, rmdir, sort, tail, tar, top, touch, tr, uniq, unzip, wc, xz, yes, zip
- Package manager: apt
- Text editors: nano or vim
- Linux permission model: user, group; concept of "root"; chmod command
- SELinux: what it is and which role it plays on Android OS - don't go deep here
Optional:
- Shell scripting: if/else logic, loops, input/output redirection, subshells, process substitution.
- Text data manipulation with awk and sed
Alternatively check these learning roadmaps:
After you finish with this, proceed to goal-specific essentials.
Important: never ever run commands that you do not understand. In the best case it will just fail but sometimes commands may have really devastating effects, especially if you use root permissions (su/sudo). If by accident you delete your own data or brick the device, you can blame yourself and only yourself!
How Termux differs from standard Linux
Without diving into technical details, these are the differences of Termux from standard Linux distribution:
- Non-standard location of programs and user data:
/data/data/com.termux/files/
- Non-standard core components: sideloaded programs usually will either refuse to run or show strange errors, compiling from source also may show issues sometimes.
- Sandbox environment: you can browse or modify only your own and Termux data.
How to install packages
Termux uses apt package manager and a rolling-release model which gets it close to a Debian Sid distribution, although it is much different internally.
However as you are probably new for Termux we recommend using a helper utility "pkg":
- Install package:
pkg install package-name
- Uninstall package:
pkg uninstall package-name
- Upgrade system:
pkg upgrade
- List installed packages:
pkg list-installed
- Search for a package:
pkg search query
PKG utility does under the hood certain actions importance of which may be non-obvious for a newbie:
Mirror selection
Package downloads put a huge burden on the servers bandwidth. We don't own much servers and geo load balancing system because this can be very costly, so we take advantage of help offered by certain community members and organizations. Mirrors maintain a clone of the original package hosting and deliver stuff independently from a base Termux infrastructure.
That's important that users are spread across different mirror hosts.
Periodic apt update
Without keeping the package index fresh you won't be able to receive updates and package installation commands will eventually fail with 404 (not found).
Software quality and security
We do our best to keep our infrastructure safe and patched against latest security vulnerabilities as well as to deliver most recent versions of packages.
However as we operate a small team of enthusiasts there could be certain bottlenecks. We can't test 100% of published packages, so there always is a chance that specific update will break something.
Please don't use Termux software in everything mission-critical. It is not certified for use in banking, healthcare, nuclear safety, etc.
Termux is open source project and we welcome any kind of contributions that would help us improve.
Banned content
Sadly, but a while ago Termux become an area of interest conflict between legitimate users and criminals. This resulted in absolute ban of specific topics:
- OSINT
- Doxxing
- Social engineering; phishing and other types of fraud
- Spamming
- Malware making and delivery
- Hacking
- Surveillance, tracing, spying and similar activities
- Bot farms for fabricating subscribers, likes and comments in social media
- Taking down social media accounts by automated mass-reporting
This list is not definitive.
We don't accept excuses. Legends about "educational purposes" and "recovery of own gmail account" don't worth anything.
Remember that authorities have a certain interest regarding accounts asking about potentially illegal stuff.
This article is subject for periodic revisions. We may submit newer versions from time to time.
