tailscale-android

Tailscale Android Client

https://tailscale.com

Private WireGuard® networks made easy

Overview

This repository contains the open source Tailscale Android client.

Using

Tailscale Packages

The latest stable release APK can be obtained from the Tailscale Packages Stable Track.

Unstable releases can be obtained from the Tailscale Packages Unstable Track.

These APKs include all supported platforms and architectures. For installing compact APKs, Android TV, or if you want automatic updates, visit the Google Play Store.

Google Playstore

Help us test new features and bug-fixes before they ship to all users! A beta testing track is available on the Play Store.

Amazon Appstore

The app can be downloaded from the Amazon Appstore for Amazon Fire tablets and Fire TV devices.

F-Droid

The F-Droid project builds the source code in this repository and maintains independently-built APKs. Note that F-Droid builds are not released, updated, or verified by the Tailscale team.

Preparing a build environment

There are several options for setting up a build environment. The Android Studio path is the most useful path for longer term development.

In all cases you will need:

• Go runtime
• Android SDK
• Android SDK components (make androidsdk will install them)

Android Studio

1. Install a Go runtime (https://go.dev/dl/).
2. Install Android Studio (https://developer.android.com/studio).
3. Start Android Studio, from the Welcome screen select "More Actions" and "SDK Manager".
4. In the SDK manager, select the "SDK Tools" tab and install the "Android SDK Command-line Tools (latest)".
5. Run make androidsdk to install the necessary SDK components.

If you would prefer to avoid Android Studio, you can also install an Android SDK. The makefile detects common paths, so sudo apt install android-sdk is sufficient on Debian / Ubuntu systems. To use an Android SDK installed in a non-standard location, set the ANDROID_SDK_ROOT environment variable to the path to the SDK.

If you installed Android Studio the tools may not be in your path. To get the correct tool path, run make androidpath and export the provided path in your shell.

Code Formatting

The ktmft plugin on the default setting should be used to autoformat all Java, Kotlin and XML files in Android Studio. Enable "Format on Save".

Docker

If you wish to avoid installing software on your host system, a Docker based development strategy is available, you can build and start a shell with:

make docker-shell

Several other makefile recipes are available for setting up the proper build environment and running builds.

Note that the docker makefile recipes s will preserve the image and remove container on completion. If changes are made to the build environment or toolchain, cached docker images may need to be rebuilt. The docker build image name is parameterized in the makefile and changing it provides a simple means to do this.

Nix

If you have Nix 2.4 or later installed, a Nix development environment can be set up with:

alias nix='nix --extra-experimental-features "nix-command flakes"'
nix develop

The flake provides host tools such as Java, make, curl, and git, and points the build at a repo-local Android SDK in ./android-sdk. The SDK directory is ignored by Git and is reused across builds.

On first use, install the Android SDK components:

make androidsdk

Then build normally:

make tailscale-debug

The debug APK is written to ./tailscale-debug.apk.

For one-shot commands without entering an interactive shell:

nix develop --command make androidsdk
nix develop --command make tailscale-debug

For faster Kotlin-only iteration while avoiding the gomobile bind step:

nix develop --command bash -lc 'cd android && ./gradlew ktfmtCheck compileDebugKotlin'

Integration tests

In GitHub Actions, integration tests run automatically for pull requests that change relevant Android, Go, or build/test infrastructure code. They can also be triggered by adding the run-integration-test label to a pull request or manually through the Integration Test workflow.

Building

make apk
make install

Building a release

Use make tag_release to stamp the Play Store version code, update the version name, and tag the current commit. The version code is derived from wall-clock time (minutes since the Unix epoch) at release time and committed into android/build.gradle, so it increases monotonically across all builds and branches while staying fixed for any given commit.

We only guarantee to support the latest Go release and any Go beta or release candidate builds (currently Go 1.14) in module mode. It might work in earlier Go versions or in GOPATH mode, but we're making no effort to keep those working.

Developing on a Fire Stick TV

On the Fire Stick:

• Settings > My Fire TV > Developer Options > ADB Debugging > ON

Then some useful commands:

adb connect 10.2.200.213:5555
adb install -r tailscale-fdroid.apk
adb shell am start -n com.tailscale.ipn/com.tailscale.ipn.MainActivity
adb shell pm uninstall com.tailscale.ipn

Bugs

Please file any issues about this code or the hosted service on the tailscale issue tracker.

Contributing

under_construction.gif

PRs welcome, but we are still working out our contribution process and tooling.

We require Developer Certificate of Origin Signed-off-by lines in commits.

About Us

We are Tailscale. See https://tailscale.com/company for more about us and what we're building.

WireGuard is a registered trademark of Jason A. Donenfeld.