python-for-android is a packaging tool for Python apps on Android. You can create your own Python distribution including the modules and dependencies you want, and bundle it in an APK along with your own code.
Features include:
- Support for building with both Python 2 and Python 3.
- Different app backends including Kivy, PySDL2, and a WebView with Python webserver.
- Automatic support for most pure Python modules, and built in support for many others, including popular dependencies such as numpy and sqlalchemy.
- Multiple architecture targets, for APKs optimised on any given device.
For documentation and support, see:
- Website: http://python-for-android.readthedocs.io
- Mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/kivy-users or https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/python-android.
Follow the quickstart instructions to install and begin creating APKs.
Quick instructions: install python-for-android with:
pip install python-for-android
(for the develop branch: pip install git+https://github.com/kivy/python-for-android.git)
Test that the install works with:
p4a --version
To build any actual apps, set up the Android SDK and NDK as described in the quickstart. Use the SDK/NDK API level & NDK version as in the quickstart, other API levels may not work.
With everything installed, build an APK with SDL2 with e.g.:
p4a apk --requirements=kivy --private /home/username/devel/planewave_frozen/ --package=net.inclem.planewavessdl2 --name="planewavessdl2" --version=0.5 --bootstrap=sdl2
For full instructions and parameter options, see the documentation.
If you need assistance, you can ask for help on our mailing list:
- User Group: https://groups.google.com/group/kivy-users
- Email: kivy-users@googlegroups.com
We also have #support Discord channel.
We love pull requests and discussing novel ideas. Check out the Kivy project contribution guide and feel free to improve python-for-android.
See our documentation for more information about the python-for-android development and release model, but don't worry about the details. You just need to make a pull request, we'll take care of the rest.
The following mailing list and IRC channel are used exclusively for discussions about developing the Kivy framework and its sister projects:
- Dev Group: https://groups.google.com/group/kivy-dev
- Email: kivy-dev@googlegroups.com
We also have #dev Discord channel.
python-for-android is released under the terms of the MIT License. Please refer to the LICENSE file.
In 2015 these tools were rewritten to provide a new, easier-to-use and easier-to-extend interface. If you'd like to browse the old toolchain, its status is recorded for posterity at at https://github.com/kivy/python-for-android/tree/old_toolchain.
In the last quarter of 2018 the python recipes were changed. The new recipe for python3 (3.7.1) had a new build system which was applied to the ancient python recipe, allowing us to bump the python2 version number to 2.7.15. This change unified the build process for both python recipes, and probably solved various issues detected over the years. These unified python recipes require a minimum target api level of 21, Android 5.0 - Lollipop. If you need to build targeting an api level below 21, you should use an older version of python-for-android (<=0.7.1).
On March of 2020 we dropped support for creating apps that use Python 2. The latest python-for-android release that supported building Python 2 was version 2019.10.6.
This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute. [Contribute].
Thank you to all our backers! 🙏 [Become a backer]
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