Android CLI: Build Android apps 3x faster using any agent(android-developers.googleblog.com)
179 pointsby ingveApr 16, 2026

14 Comments

user2722•Apr 16, 2026
Agents will allow human programmers to get what they've been begging for decades now: proper requirements and flexible, logical, tooling.
bayarearefugee•Apr 16, 2026
> Agents will allow human programmers to get what they've been begging for decades now: proper requirements and flexible, logical, tooling.

...and once this goal is finally reached the programmer will breathe a sigh of relief and then promptly be fired since now the machine can do the job as well as they could.

risyachka•Apr 16, 2026
The tooling in 2026 is so easy you can do almost anything without AI very very quickly.
rtpg•Apr 16, 2026
this has been my sort of big tent alignment with AI people. If I'm getting good CLI tooling that _actually works_ (or fixes to existing ones that have been busted forever) then I'm pretty happy.

Things that make systems more understandable to the LLMs ... usually make things more understandable for humans as well. Usually.

The biggest issue I've found is that vibed up tooling tends to be pretty bad at having the right kind of "sense" for what makes good CLI UX. So you still have awkward argument structures or naming. Better than nothing though

whattheheckheck•Apr 17, 2026
Any textbooks or resources on getting better at naming things?

The Programmers Brain book was my go to

stavros•Apr 17, 2026
The Design of Everyday Things.
kube-system•Apr 17, 2026
The conclusion I drew from that book is that I shouldn't be naming things.
ramses0•Apr 17, 2026
"How to be Unix-y in Eleventy Billion Steps"

http://www.robertames.com/blog.cgi/entries/the-unix-way-comm...

TLDR: standard list of long options <https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Option-Tab...> and short options from -a to -z <http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch10s05.html>.

jadbox•Apr 16, 2026
I've been thinking the same thing lately. It's sorta frustrating that it required bots to force tech companies to make clean simple cli driven development workflows.
qingcharles•Apr 17, 2026
It's wild that it took AI to get half the companies on the planet to actually add reasonably priced APIs to their products so I don't have to puppeteer every damn thing with a flakey harness.
Evidlo•Apr 16, 2026
Now please let us install the apps just as easily
stronglikedan•Apr 16, 2026
downloading an APK and opening it is already about as easy as it gets. the only thing easier would be for someone else to do it for you
throwaway81523•Apr 16, 2026
You're forgetting the installation ("sideloading", what everyone else calls installation) restrictions they are about to deploy. It will be a significant hassle to install anything without Google's approval. Many F-droid apps are showing warning notices about this upcoming change.
kube-system•Apr 17, 2026
Good, it shouldn't be two clicks for elderly people to install trojans on their phone that then drain their bank account. There should be some explicit confirmation that the user knows what they are doing and they are not being scammed. It is long overdue.
LtWorf•Apr 17, 2026
It is 1 click because the malware is on the play store already!
kube-system•Apr 17, 2026
Both are problematic.
stavros•Apr 17, 2026
"This APK cannot be scanned and its safety cannot be verified. Learn more/go back" and "learn more" has a link that looks like nothing but is actually a button to actually install the app.

I can think of some easier things, for example popping up a dialog, pressing "install" and having my all actually be installed after that.

sunaookami•Apr 16, 2026
>Google collects usage data for the Android CLI, such as commands, sub-commands, and flags used. This data does not include custom parameters or identifiable information. This information helps improve the tool and is collected in accordance with Google's Privacy Policy.

>https://policies.google.com/privacy

>Disable Android CLI metrics collection by using the --no-metrics flag.

No thanks, is there no env variable for this? Doesn't Google have enough data already?

gowld•Apr 16, 2026
Android CLI can write a tool that wraps android-cli and automatically passes the flag based on an env variable.

How would Google have enough data about a brand new product without collecting that data?

tredre3•Apr 16, 2026
> How would Google have enough data about a brand new product without collecting that data?

They wouldn't. But on the other hand, they probably have a large amount of in-house Android app developers on whom they can conduct such metrics collection. I wouldn't expect outsiders to have vastly different workflows, because when you get out of the happy path with Android all you get is pain.

panzi•Apr 17, 2026
`alias android-cli='android-cli --no-metrics'`
SJMG•Apr 17, 2026
Uh do aliases load in non-interactive shells?
EdwardDiego•Apr 17, 2026
You could export BASH_ENV to have Bash processes source a given file at startup.

Zsh has .zshenv, and Fish just has config.fish for everything with the ability to guard certain things within it to login only or non-interactive only.

figmert•Apr 17, 2026
Create a wrapping binary instead

    mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
    printf '#!/usr/bin/env sh\nexec android-cli --no-metrics "$@"' > ~/.local/bin/android-cli
    echo 'PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshenv
OutOfHere•Apr 16, 2026
But can I publish an app without having to share my ID? I want an ecosystem that doesn't require it.
Flavius•Apr 16, 2026
Absolutely not. That would be crazy.
nout•Apr 16, 2026
Zapstore or Obtanium...
binkHN•Apr 17, 2026
It's not just your ID; it's your address, phone number, and the list goes on.
iririririr•Apr 16, 2026
> Your agents perform best when they have a lightweight, programmatic interface to interact with the Android SDK and development environment.

F you google. Me too. Why didn't we get a sane way to build android apps before you had to please chatbots?

bitpush•Apr 16, 2026
Damned if you do. Damned if you dont.
stavros•Apr 17, 2026
Damned if you don't, damned if you do fifteen years later for an entirely different reason.
antirez•Apr 16, 2026
Let's see if even mid/big companies with tons of resources, with AI and the right tooling will continue to write webview-apps or, even worse, use some kind of multi target wrapper.
whstl•Apr 16, 2026
I wish the same thing existed for Apple.

Everything I do for macOS/iOS is already without Xcode but it's a pain in the ass to keep up with changes, and there are things I haven't figured out yet (like AUv3).

agentifysh•Apr 16, 2026
Flutter CLI is what we really need but this is a welcome addition.
bartekpacia•Apr 17, 2026
It exists already. Wdym?
mridulmalpani•Apr 17, 2026
How can I use this official android skill with Claude code?

Is there any step by step process or guidance on it?

cbhl•Apr 17, 2026
Looks like the docs start here: https://developer.android.com/tools/agents/android-skills#us...

There's a link to a repo or you can use the CLI tool to init the skills

winrid•Apr 17, 2026
Catching up to Flutter.
firemelt•Apr 17, 2026
flutter have this already?
winrid•Apr 17, 2026
I meant in terms of development speed with agents.
diego_sandoval•Apr 17, 2026
AFAIK, Flutter has had a good, capable CLI since the beggining. You've never needed to install Android Studio to use Flutter.
hemc4•Apr 17, 2026
Wow. Thanks for this update. It streamlined a lot of tasks.

Apart from this, next step will be to add suport for building android apps on the android phones itself. No desktop needed.Building on the laptop with agents and installing the build in the phone and testing doea not seem AI native. If everything can run on my android phone, development cycle will speed up.

xstas1•Apr 17, 2026
you already could! just install Termux, npm install your favourite agent harness (pi for one has explicit Termux support, but its AGENTS.md works just fine with Claude Code for example - https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/blob/main/packages/codin...), and say you want an android app. It problem solves for a bit, then spits out an apk out to your Downloads folder.
hemc4•Apr 17, 2026
Let me try this. Last year this was a dream. Can't belive we are so close to automate all of this.

My major issue last time was providing the feedback to the agent by running the apk on phone i.e, pass the debug log from the apk back to agent so it can iterate on it without me providing any input.

smalltorch•Apr 17, 2026
You actually can right now on termux.
xstas1•Apr 17, 2026
Also coding agents will happily compile android applications (of maximum complexity) via Github Actions where you can just pick them up with Obtainium. No PC needed
jadar•Apr 17, 2026
This is great. We also need a tool to expose source jars to agents so they don’t need to compress. There’s a lot of Compose overloads that Claude just guesses at. I built something internally but it needs polish and Claude really struggled with the deep Gradle integration.
anabis•Apr 17, 2026
The install command shown for Windows is 404.

`curl -fsSL https://dl.google.com/android/cli/latest/windows_x86_64/inst... | bash`

The URL shown for individual OSs work, but the script errors for me.

`curl.exe -fsSL https://dl.google.com/android/cli/latest/windows_x86_64/inst... -o "%TEMP%\i.cmd" && "%TEMP%\i.cmd"`

I manually downloaded the exe, but it say socket error. vibe coding is going strong!

throwa356262•Apr 17, 2026
Goggles Android tooling has been like this forever, nothing to do with AI.
rvillberg•Apr 17, 2026
This is a good step forward, but keep in mind the claimed gains are about "project and environment setup", not the tasks you deal with on a daily basis in an existing project.
anabis•Apr 17, 2026
Taking screenshots, optionally with component borders highlighted, and operating the UI with element names like "button1" instead of tap 200,30 looks useful. If I could get it to work.