8 things you must try with the Linux Terminal app on your Android phone

One of Google’s significant innovations that has gone largely unnoticed this year was the rollout of Linux Terminal support baked right into Android. If you own a Pixel and are running the latest stable version of Android, you can enable the app and open up a world of possibilities. Sure, the terminal is daunting, but thanks to its presence in a virtual machine, it remains largely isolated from your phone’s critical inner workings. This makes it the perfect playground.

If you’re asking yourself how a black screen with incoherent lines of text can be a playground, you’ve come to the right place. In this piece, I’ll detail some useful, not-so-useful, and downright fun ways to use the Linux Terminal app on your Android phone.

Getting lost in the terminal is easy, so a little help is always welcome. I’ve been leaning heavily on this brilliant Linux Terminal companion app called Linux Command Library to help with the essential, must-know commands. However, you needn’t ever go beyond the terminal itself for help.

There are two parameters you’ll need to remember: help and man.

• Help displays a list of commands that are available to you. Think of it as a phonebook.
• Man, on the other hand, displays the manual pages for utilities and commands.

It’s a good idea to use the help command to explore the possibilities broadly, and then man to drill down into those you’re interested in. The man parameter is used as such, with ls as an example:

There are two other important commands you’ll need to know. They are:

• Update the system: sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade
• Install a package: sudo apt install [name of the package]
• Remove old lines from the terminal: clear
• Close the currently running program: usually CTRL c unless otherwise specified by the utility

Let’s look at something simple before we get into the more technical items. Linux has several system information tools that you can access through the terminal. Running them on the Pixel will give you detailed information about how much RAM and CPU power Debian is using, as well as other details related to your virtual machine.

There are two options available: neofetch, which displays a less nuanced overview of your system, and htop, which offers real-time updates of system resource usage.

sudo apt install neofetch

Once installed, type neofetch or htop in the terminal and hit the Enter button to run them.

The command line might seem an impractical way to play games, but terminal games just ooze charm. Playing Bastet, a Tetris-like block stacking game, was one of the first things I learned how to do on Linux, and it’s something I still do to this day. Yes, using the Pixel 8’s relatively small screen and control buttons is awkward, but it’s still a blast.

To install it, use the command below:

Of course, Bastet isn’t your only option. Find some of my favorite terminal games below, including their install commands:

sudo apt install pacman4console

sudo apt install moon-buggy

sudo apt install ninvaders

Control other devices on your network

Perhaps one of the more useful ways to use the terminal on your Android phone is to command other devices on your network through SSH. If you’ve built your own Pi-hole to block ads or build your own digital assistant, you can easily SSH into it from your phone through the terminal and check up on it occasionally.

You will need to install SSH using the command below

Alternatively, if you’re not a Pi-hole owner, you can still SSH into almost any machine, from your homemade NAS to your desktop.

Turn the Terminal into a secret notebook

There are several text editors that make full use of the terminal, but nano is my favorite. I’ve used it for years on the desktop, and now I can try it on the terminal.

To install it, enter the following command:

Once it’s installed, run nano.

You can now use the terminal to take notes, too. You can save the current note in a text file and recall it once you reopen the app. Brilliant!

Your Android phone can be a portal to 1999, when leather trench coats were still all the rage. The scrolling matrix screen is still a firm part of popular culture, and you can turn your terminal window into something similar thanks to cmatrix.

To install it, type the following into the terminal on your phone, followed by the Enter key:

To run the utility, type the following, followed by the Enter key:

Your phone’s terminal window should now be covered in vertically cascading text.

To stop the command, tap the CTRL button followed by C.

Stress test your Pixel

Should you stress test phones known for heating problems? Probably not, but it’s fun nonetheless. After building a system, it’s a good idea to stress test it to check what it’s capable of, how hot it’ll get, and whether all the components are in working order. You can do this, too, using traditional Android apps. However, it’s much more fun to use the terminal.

First, install the stress testing tool:

Once installed, you can stress test the CPU by running the following command:

stress –cpu [number of cpus] –timeout [how long you want the test to run, in seconds]

As an example, the Pixel 8 has nine CPU cores, so to stress test all of them my command would be:

stress –cpu 9 –timeout 60

To monitor the progress of the test, open htop in a second terminal tab, and switch between the two views. You will notice the CPU cores on htop kick up to 100% and remain pretty high for the allotted time.

If you’re a fan of early 2010s pop culture, you can turn your expensive Google phone into a Nyan Cat display. Run the below command:

Then type nyancat and hit Enter to run the utility. Your terminal will display a flying poptart-encased feline with rainbow trails.

This is just the beginning!

The Linux Terminal app is an excellent addition to Android phones. While users only have access to a text-based portal to the Debian virtual machine, Google is planning to run full-scale Linux apps on Android’s desktop mode eventually. That’s pretty exciting, and something we can all look forward to in the future. For now, the terminal is a great learning and experimenting tool for most and a portable development toolkit for others.

The items above are merely intended to highlight the terminal’s potential. Some have installed full-blown graphical interfaces, turning their Pixels into portable Linux machines. We’ve even managed to install and run Doom. The possibilities are only really limited by your imagination, so I encourage you to keep reading resources, guides, and how-tos detailing the more intricate ways of using the terminal on Android.

Do you have a fun way of using the Linux Terminal on your phone? Perhaps I missed something handy. If so, let the community know in the comments below.