droidkit 1.0.0

Set up the Android SDK, a JDK and emulators for Flutter without Android Studio. One command installs, diagnoses and manages your Android toolchain.

droidkit

The Android toolchain for Flutter, without Android Studio.

droidkit is a cross-platform CLI (Linux, macOS, Windows) that installs and manages the JDK, Android SDK, build tools, licenses, emulator and virtual devices Flutter needs, wires them into Flutter and your shell, and repairs broken setups.

dart pub global activate droidkit
droidkit setup

A few minutes later flutter doctor shows a green Android toolchain and droidkit start boots an emulator.

You need	Run
Everything installed, from scratch	droidkit setup
To find out what's broken, and fix it	droidkit doctor --fix
An emulator	droidkit start
Android SDK on CI	droidkit --yes setup --no-emulator
A JDK that won't touch your system Java	droidkit jdk install
ANDROID_HOME and PATH in your shell	droidkit env --persist

Why droidkit

Android Studio is a multi-gigabyte IDE. If you use VS Code, Zed, Neovim, a headless server or CI, you only need the SDK and an emulator. Setting those up by hand means the right cmdline-tools layout, a compatible JDK, licenses, a system image for your CPU, an AVD and environment variables. droidkit does it in one command, and it's written in Dart, so anyone with Flutter can run it.

Features

• One-command setup: droidkit setup, or droidkit --yes setup unattended.
• Reuses what you have: finds existing SDKs and JDKs, installs only what's missing.
• Always current: reads Google's SDK catalog and the API level your Flutter builds against.
• Verified downloads: SHA-1 / SHA-256 checked, installed atomically.
• doctor --fix: checks SDK, JDK, licenses, KVM / Hypervisor / WHPX, WSL, Flutter config and disk space.
• Emulators: create, start (--headless --wait for CI), stop and delete.
• JDK management: Eclipse Temurin into ~/.droidkit/jdk, system Java untouched.
• Shell integration: bash, zsh, fish, PowerShell and cmd.
• CI-friendly: non-interactive mode, exit codes, plain logs.

Install

Requires the Dart SDK (bundled with Flutter).

dart pub global activate droidkit

Add ~/.pub-cache/bin (Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Pub\Cache\bin) to your PATH.

Usage

droidkit setup          # JDK → SDK → licenses → platform/build-tools → emulator
droidkit start          # boot the emulator
flutter run

droidkit doctor --fix   # diagnose and repair an existing setup

Command	What it does
setup	Install and configure the full toolchain.
doctor [--fix]	Diagnose (and repair) the toolchain.
start [name] / stop [--all] / list	Run and manage emulators.
avd create | delete | devices	Create and delete emulators.
images [--api N]	System images that run on this computer.
sdk list | install | uninstall | update	Manage SDK packages.
jdk install | list	Manage JDKs.
licenses [--show]	Review and accept Android SDK licenses.
env [--persist]	Shell environment (eval "$(droidkit env)").
clean [--all]	Remove caches and what droidkit installed.

Global options: --sdk-root <path>, --yes, --verbose. Run droidkit help <command> for details. More in example/.

CI (GitHub Actions)

- uses: subosito/flutter-action@v2
- run: dart pub global activate droidkit
- run: droidkit --yes setup --no-emulator
- run: flutter build apk

Emulator tests on Linux runners with KVM:

droidkit --yes avd create --image google_atd --name ci
droidkit start ci --headless --wait
flutter test integration_test
droidkit stop --all

--yes accepts the Android SDK licenses; read them first with droidkit licenses --show.

Platform support

Host	SDK & builds	Emulator
Linux x64	✅	✅ (needs KVM)
macOS (Apple Silicon / Intel)	✅	✅
Windows x64	✅	✅ (needs WHPX or AEHD)
Linux arm64, Windows arm64	✅	❌ not published by Google
WSL 2	✅	❌ use the Windows side

Configuration

Variable	Effect
DROIDKIT_HOME	droidkit's own files (default ~/.droidkit).
HTTPS_PROXY / HTTP_PROXY / NO_PROXY	Proxy for downloads.
DROIDKIT_REPOSITORY_URL	Alternative Google repository mirror.
DROIDKIT_NO_UPDATE_CHECK	Disable the daily update check.

The SDK defaults to an existing install, else ~/Android/Sdk (Linux), ~/Library/Android/sdk (macOS) or %LOCALAPPDATA%\Android\Sdk (Windows). droidkit never changes your shell profile, Flutter config or system Java without asking.

Troubleshooting

• "Android license status unknown" in flutter doctor: command-line tools 23+ confuse Flutter ≤ 3.47 (flutter#191487). droidkit installs 22.0 by default; --cmdline-tools latest opts in to 23.
• Emulator slow or won't start on Linux: run droidkit doctor; enable virtualization in BIOS and sudo usermod -aG kvm $USER. Logs are in ~/.droidkit/logs/.
• Windows hypervisor errors: enable Windows Hypervisor Platform or install AEHD.
• Behind a proxy: set HTTPS_PROXY.

Uninstall

droidkit clean --all
dart pub global deactivate droidkit

Contributing

dart format . && dart analyze --fatal-infos && dart test

License

MIT. droidkit is not affiliated with Google. Android SDK components are downloaded from Google under their own licenses, which you accept via droidkit licenses.