Install Ink/Stitch on an Android Phone or Tablet

1 minute read

The simulator on a phone screen

Please note, that this is a fun tutorial. It is questionable how useful it is to use Ink/Stitch on a phone. The installation may crash often. We do not offer special support for it.

This tutorial is a bit technical and directed to experienced users. We will use Termux to setup a Linux Desktop on which we can use Inkscape and Ink/Stitch.

On this page you can find a simple installation walkthrough. More in depth information can be found here: Termux, Termux X11

We want to thank LinuxDroidMaster for the hard work on the script which enables us to make this work.

Install

In our example we are going to use proot, arch linux and xfce desktop. Read through the above mentioned documentation to decide what you want to use.

  • We start by installing Termux, if not already in use.

  • In Termux install packages to run Linux for Termux and Android. Run these commands in Termux command line

    pkg update
pkg upgrade

    pkg install x11-repo termux-x11-nightly tur-repo pulseaudio proot-distro wget git vim

  • Download and install the termux-x11 app for Android from termux-x11 nightly release. Use the file debug-universal.apk.

  • To install linux with proot-distro use the following command

    proot-distro install archlinux

  • Login to archlinux container

    proot-distro login archlinux

  • Now we are inside of the arch installation. Let’s update the system

    pacman -Syu

  • Install sudo

    pacman -S sudo

  • Create user

    useradd -m -G wheel username
passwd username

    Insert the following line into /etc/sudoers

    username ALL=(ALL) ALL

  • Install xfce and inkscape. You can of course choose an other desktop environment if you want.

    pacman -S xfce4 inkscape

  • Leave arch linux container

    exit

  • Back in termux get the script to run the xfce

    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LinuxDroidMaster/Termux-Desktops/main/scripts/proot_arch/startxfce4_arch.sh

    Make the script executable

    chmod +x startxfce4_arch.sh

    Edit the script to adapt it to your username

    vim startxfce4_arch.sh

    Replace the username droidmaster to your own username in this line

    proot-distro login archlinux --shared-tmp -- /bin/bash -c  'export PULSE_SERVER=127.0.0.1 && export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=${TMPDIR} && su - droidmaster -c "env DISPLAY=:0 startxfce4"'

    On many phones you might encounter a black screen when the script is running. If this happens to you, replace termux-x11 :0 >/dev/null & with

    termux-x11 :0 -legacy-drawing >/dev/null &

    Save and exit vim

  • Run the script and it will start up the xfce

    ./startxfce4_arch.sh

  • We already installed Inkscape. So open it once, then close again.

    Download Ink/Stitch for arm64 and install as usual (copy to extensions folder).