How to install Android SDK on Ubuntu?

Question

For my Ubuntu machine, I downloaded the latest version of Android SDK from this page.

After extracting the downloaded .tgz file, I was trying to search for installation instructions and found:

To get started on Linux:

Unpack the .zip file you've downloaded. The SDK files are download separately to a user-specified directory.

Make a note of the name and location of the SDK directory on your system—you will need to refer to the SDK directory later when using the SDK tools from the command line.

What exactly are we supposed to do?

Mcduffie

there's an easy install paolorotolo.github.io/android-studio -- or check this tutorial on how do it manualy -- youtube.com/watch?v=qfinKxwYYZs – Jennie

@Jennie Any idea about the maintenance and long term support paolorotolo's Android studio? This looks more of a personal project :( – Mcduffie

Android Studio itself alerts you when there is a new update/upgrade so you do it from there. I dont think the person modified AS – Jennie

from my last comment -- however you can ask that question directly to the person here -- github.com/PaoloRotolo/android-studio/issues – Jennie

@Jennie Yeah sure, done now! – Mcduffie

AskUbuntu's solution – Shericesheridan

After using sudo apt install android-sdk on Ubuntu, the location is /usr/lib/android-sdk – Rase

Answer 1

Option 1:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install android-sdk

The location of Android SDK on Linux can be any of the following:

• /home/AccountName/Android/Sdk

• /usr/lib/android-sdk

• /Library/Android/sdk/

• /Users/[USER]/Library/Android/sdk

Option 2:

• Download the Android Studio.

• Extract downloaded .zip file.

  The extracted folder name will read somewhat like android-studio

To keep navigation easy, move this folder to Home directory.

• After moving, copy the moved folder by right clicking it. This action will place folder's location to clipboard.

• Use Ctrl Alt T to open a terminal

• Go to this folder's directory using cd /home/(USER NAME)/android-studio/bin/

• Type this command to make studio.sh executable: chmod +x studio.sh

• Type ./studio.sh

A pop up will be shown asking for installation settings. In my particular case, it is a fresh install so I'll go with selecting I do not have a previous version of Studio or I do not want to import my settings.

If you choose to import settings anyway, you may need to close any old project which is opened in order to get a working Android SDK.

From now onwards, setup wizard will guide you.

Android Studio can work with both Open JDK and Oracle's JDK (recommended). Incase, Open JDK is installed the wizard will recommend installing Oracle Java JDK because some UI and performance issues are reported while using OpenJDK.

The downside with Oracle's JDK is that it won't update with the rest of your system like OpenJDK will.

The wizard may also prompt about the input problems with IDEA .

Select install type

Verify installation settings

An emulator can also be configured as needed.

The wizard will start downloading the necessary SDK tools

The wizard may also show an error about Linux 32 Bit Libraries, which can be solved by using the below command:

sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libncurses5:i386 libstdc++6:i386 lib32z1

After this, all the required components will be downloaded and installed automatically.

After everything is upto the mark, just click finish

To make a Desktop icon, go to 'Configure' and then click 'Create Desktop Entry'

source

Mcduffie

Not working if you import settings from old version. AS is broken that way. – Rancid

@NiklasRosencrantz We did not tried importing settings so can't say anything about it. – Mcduffie

It worked when I just closed the old project that was imported from AS 2.3. – Rancid

what is the install location of Android SDK, if we use the option 1 ? – Mares

@PratikSinghal Mostly this /home/AccountName/Android/Sdk – Mcduffie

@student i use option 1 but cant find it in /home/accountname any idea ? – Sitra

Also cannot find the sdk by using option1 – Convolute

@fzyzcjy @anunixercoder I changed my machine and use Mac now - these locations apply to Mac /home/AccountName/Android/Sdk /usr/lib/android-sdk /Library/Android/sdk/ /Users/[USER]/Library/Android/sdk – Mcduffie

Does installing from the ubuntu repository give you an old version of the sdk? – Unreadable

For Ubuntu, with option 1, I found the sdk there: /usr/lib/android-sdk – Cleres

As for Kali, using the command in option 1 has downloaded the SDK at /usr/share/android-sdk – Melt

FWIW, as it relates to a JDK, and at least with the latest Android Studio Giraffe, I believe this is bundled with the IDE now as I did not need to install one and I have no JDK package installed in my OS. – Microclimatology

I also had it installed to /usr/lib/android-sdk when using Ubuntu on WSL2 (Windows 11). – Burny

Didn't function for me. I went as far as "./studio.sh" then I got the message "No JRE found. Please make sure $STUDIO_JDK, $JDK_Home, or $JAVA_HOME point to valid JRE installation." – Endearment

@AlainReve can you please update the answer with your findings? – Mcduffie

Answer 2

To install it on a Debian based system simply do

# Install latest JDK
sudo apt install default-jdk

# get latest sdk tools - link will change. go to https://developer.android.com/studio/#downloads and look for "Command line tools only" download from webpage as you will need to accept terms. Then extract.

mkdir cmdline-tools
mv <folder-you-extracted> android-sdk/cmdline-tools

# So after this step is done you will have ~/cmdline-tools/tools with bin/ and lib/ in it.

Then add the Android SDK to your PATH, open ~/.bashrc in editor and add the following lines into the file

# Export the Android SDK path 
export ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/cmdline-tools
export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/tools/bin
export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools

Run

source ~/.bashrc

Show all available sdk packages

sdkmanager --list

Identify latest android platform (here it's 33) and run

sdkmanager "platform-tools" "platforms;android-33"

Now you have adb, fastboot and the latest sdk tools installed

Alvinia

The export JAVA_OPTS=.... caused an error when running sdkmanager : "Error: Could not find or load main class java.se.ee". Removing it fixed the issue. – Isidraisidro

Absolutely nowhere else mentions the sdk-tools download. Thank you! – Jenine

In case this would prove useful to anyone passing by, if you do not want to include export JAVA_OPTS=... for some reason (like sdkmanager still failing even with it in the startup files, e.g. .bashrc and .zshrc, already, which happened to me in my other machine), you could use SDKman to install different versions of Java and use Java 8 only when you run sdkmanager. – Rode

#54288119 – Adkisson

sudo apt install android-sdk put the sdk into /usr/lib/android-sdk – Cleres

It seems that the current folder name for the "tools" should be cmdline-tools/latest now. – Manis

Answer 3

Android SDK Manager

sudo snap install androidsdk

Usage

You can use the sdkmanager to perform the following tasks.

List installed and available packages

androidsdk --list [options]

Install packages

androidsdk packages [options]

The packages argument is an SDK-style path as shown with the --list command, wrapped in quotes (for example, "build-tools;29.0.0" or "platforms;android-28"). You can pass multiple package paths, separated with a space, but they must each be wrapped in their own set of quotes.

For example, here's how to install the latest platform tools (which includes adb and fastboot) and the SDK tools for API level 28:

androidsdk "platform-tools" "platforms;android-28"

Alternatively, you can pass a text file that specifies all packages:

androidsdk --package_file=package_file [options]

The package_file argument is the location of a text file in which each line is an SDK-style path of a package to install (without quotes).

To uninstall, simply add the --uninstall flag:

androidsdk --uninstall packages [options]
androidsdk --uninstall --package_file=package_file [options]

Update all installed packages

androidsdk --update [options]

Note

androidsdk it is snap wraper of sdkmanager all options of sdkmanager work with androidsdk

Location of installed android sdk files : /home/user/AndroidSDK

See all sdkmanager options in google documentation

About outdated cmdline-tools inner snap package.

The androidsdk contains cmdline-tools inner snap package. Developers try to keep snap's "cmdline-tools" up to date by periodically updating the snap package. So some time it can be outdated. If you detect outdated cmdline-tools you can create issue on GitHub repository of androidsdk.

Audwin

for Ubuntu21.04 snap package works beautifully! for flutter development, complete this with flutter config --android-sdk ~/AndroidSDK; androidsdk "platform-tools" "platforms;android-32" "build-tools;30.0.3" "cmdline-tools;latest" – Steric

This is the best answer, as it doesn't require you to manually download and extract stuff, can be used without any GUI, and doesn't run into "licenses not accepted" issues. You could even run androidsdk "cmdline-tools;latest" to install the "real" sdkmanager, which might be a later version than the one in snap (it will be installed to ~/AndroidSDK/cmdline-tools/bin) – Tadeo

I try to keep snap's "cmdline-tools" up to date by periodically updating the snap package. – Audwin

Please, put this answer to the top! – Kordula

Answer 4

UPDATE: This method is no longer recommended and installation is as easy as downloading it from the official website, then running the downloaded binary.

ORIGINAL ANSWER:

There is no need to download any binaries or files or follow difficult installation instructions.

All you really needed to do is:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install android-sdk

Update: Ubuntu 18.04 only

Clupeoid

This will only work for Ubuntu 18.04, which was released in April 2018. packages.ubuntu.com/… – Stump

says I need to accept the licence... I have no idea how to do this :C – Anzac

@FrankHaubenreisser 16.0.4 is fine packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/android-sdk – Respect

@ErikAronesty The package doesn't leave you with a working SDK < 18.04 – Clupeoid

How to accept license? there's no sdkmanager and android files. – Baisden

where will the sdk be placed btw? – Jointress

@Jointress Mine went into /usr/lib/android-sdk/ on Ubuntu 18.04 – Clupeoid

This seems very incomplete; sdkmanager is missing so we cannot install any components or platforms. – Fullbodied

Answer 5

I can tell you the steps for installing purely via command line from scratch. I tested it on Ubuntu on 22 Feb 2021.

create sdk folder

export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=/usr/lib/android-sdk
sudo mkdir -p $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT

install openjdk

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

download android sdk

Go to https://developer.android.com/studio/index.html Then down to Command line tools only Click on Linux link, accept the agreement and instead of downloading right click and copy link address

cd $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT
sudo wget https://dl.google.com/android/repository/commandlinetools-linux-6858069_latest.zip
sudo unzip commandlinetools-linux-6858069_latest.zip

move folders

Rename the unpacked directory from cmdline-tools to tools, and place it under $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/cmdline-tools, so now it should look like: $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/cmdline-tools/tools. And inside it, you should have: NOTICE.txt bin lib source.properties.

set path

PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/cmdline-tools/latest/bin:$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/cmdline-tools/tools/bin

This had no effect for me, hence the next step

browse to sdkmanager

cd $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT/cmdline-tools/tools/bin

accept licenses

yes | sudo sdkmanager --licenses

create build

Finally, run this inside your project

chmod 777 gradlew
sudo ./gradlew assembleDebug

This creates an APK named -debug.apk at //build/outputs/apk/debug The file is already signed with the debug key and aligned with zipalign, so you can immediately install it on a device.

REFERENCES

https://gist.github.com/guipmourao/3e7edc951b043f6de30ca15a5cc2be40

Android Command line tools sdkmanager always shows: Warning: Could not create settings

"Failed to install the following Android SDK packages as some licences have not been accepted" error

https://developer.android.com/studio/build/building-cmdline#sign_cmdline

Micromho

#65262840 if anybody has error while accepting the licenses. – Disciplinarian

Answer 6

If you are on Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty), and you literally just need the SDK (no Android Studio), you can install it like on Debian:

• sudo apt install android-sdk android-sdk-platform-23
• export ANDROID_HOME=/usr/lib/android-sdk
• In build.gradle, change compileSdkVersion to 23 and buildToolsVersion to 24.0.0
• run gradle build

Horwitz

Answer 7

install the android SDK for me was not the problem, having the right JRE and JDK was the problem.

To solve this install the JVM 8 (the last fully compatible, for now):

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jre

Next use update-alternative to switch to the jre-8 version:

sudo update-alternatives --config java

You can revert JVM version when you want with the same update-alternatives command

Note that you problably have to do the same after this with javac also (now you have only java command at version 8)

first do:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

next:

sudo update-alternatives --config javac

After this you can install android SDK that require this specific Java version

Fieldstone

Answer 8

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer oracle-java7-set-default
wget https://dl.google.com/dl/android/studio/ide-zips/2.2.0.12/android-studio-ide-145.3276617-linux.zip
unzip android-studio-ide-145.3276617-linux.zip
cd android-studio/bin
./studio.sh

Fuddyduddy

Java 8 can be installed instead. Line 3: sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer oracle-java8-set-default – Isidraisidro

Answer 9

Install Android Studio with

sudo snap install android-studio --classic

when you open it for the first time it will install the SDK for you (with options) .

Unkempt

Answer 10

I'm using the android studio hedgehog, and you can go through the process installing/configuring the sdk via:

• Project Settings > Search SDK
• Side to the android sdk path that shows up and currently empty, click the edit button
• The editor now shows the wizard to install and configure the sdk which is pretty straightforward

Abri

Answer 11

This is specifically for EAS local builds and keep the Android SDK files on your home directory. Execute the following commands

sudo apt install \
  sdkmanager \
  android-sdk \
  android-sdk-helper
mkdir -p $HOME/.android/sdk
export ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=$HOME/.android/sdk
sdkmanager --install 'ndk;23.1.7779620' 'platforms;android-33' 'build-tools;30.0.3'
sdkmanager --license

From there you can do

eas build --local -p android

Trantrance