A modern, native Android Gopher client — Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Coroutines, Room.
 Home |
 ANSI colour map |
 Text wrap |
Grab the latest APK from the Releases page, tap it on your phone, and allow installing from unknown sources. (minSdk 24 / Android 7.0+.)
Obtainium auto-updates straight from GitHub Releases. Add this URL in Obtainium → Add App:
https://github.com/felipedbene/deburrow
Maintainer notes on signing & store submission (F-Droid / IzzyOnDroid) are in CLAUDE.md.
- Browse Gopher menus, read text files, view images
- ANSI-color + word-wrap text viewer (renders colored
.ansiart; toggle wrap for maps) - Veronica / type-7 search with a query prompt and tappable results
- Address-bar navigation, bookmarks, browse history, and search history
- Downloads for binary items, response caching, and TLS (
gophers://) - Opens
gopher:///gophers://links from other apps (even while running) - Material 3 theming and an adaptive (+ Android-13 themed) launcher icon
DeBurrow ships pointing at these — all live, served over Gopher:
| Hole | Address |
|---|---|
| gopher-cta — live Chicago CTA 'L' trains | gopher://gopher.debene.dev/ |
| Phlog — the debene.dev blog over Gopher | gopher://gopher.debene.dev:7071/ |
| Ask the Deck — a live three-card tarot reading | gopher://gopher.debene.dev:7072/ |
Elsewhere:
- Blog (web): https://debene.dev
- CTA tracker (web original): https://tracker.debene.dev
- gopher-cta source: https://github.com/felipedbene/gopher-cta
DeBurrow is an evolution of Pocket Gopher, a J2ME / MIDlet Gopher client written in
2010 by Felix Pleșoianu (felixp7@yahoo.com), with Gopher URL/menu parsing code and ideas
by Nuno J. Silva (gopher://sdf-eu.org/1/users/njsg).
The original protocol logic (menu parsing, URL parsing, the socket request/response dance) was
ported to Kotlin and corrected where needed; the entire J2ME LCDUI layer was replaced with a
Compose UI and a modern architecture. The original MIT license and copyright are retained — see
LICENSE. The original sources (PocketGopher.java, .jad) are kept in the
repo root for reference.
app/src/main/java/dev/debene/gopher/
protocol/ GopherType, GopherItem, GopherRequest, GopherUrl, GopherParser, GopherClient
data/ Room DB + DAOs, GopherRepository (cache), LibraryRepository, DownloadStore
ui/ Compose browser, viewers, bookmarks/history, theme, navigation
di/ AppContainer (manual DI)
app/src/test/ GopherUrl / GopherParser / AnsiParser unit tests
app/src/main/assets/home.txt bundled start page (Gopher menu format)
Requires a full JDK 21 (with javac) and the Android SDK (platform 35).
export ANDROID_HOME="$HOME/Android/Sdk"
export JAVA_HOME="/path/to/a/full/jdk-21"
./gradlew :app:assembleDebug # -> app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk
./gradlew :app:testDebugUnitTest # protocol unit tests
./gradlew :app:installDebug # install on a connected device/emulatorOr open the project in Android Studio and Run.
MIT — see LICENSE.