ValDroid

ValDroid is an unofficial, community-developed launcher that runs Valheim on mobile: Android phones and tablets, with touch controls, gamepad support and mods. Since 0.1.3 the game runs natively: Unity's own Android engine, no emulation. The box64 engine that ValDroid started with is still there as a fallback.

[!NOTE] ValDroid does not include the game. It runs your own copy of Valheim's Linux build. You can download it inside the app with your Steam account*, or add it as a .zip you made yourself.

* Downloading from Steam needs the Steam mobile app with Steam Guard turned on. You enter your Steam login in ValDroid, it goes straight to Steam's servers, and you approve the sign-in in the Steam mobile app — the authorisation itself happens there. ValDroid only receives Steam's permission to download the game and to use Steam Cloud; the permission is kept in memory for the session.

[!TIP] ValDroid works best with Valheim 1.0.15 or newer. Older builds may show problems that are already fixed on the current version.

[!WARNING] ValDroid is in beta. It plays well on the phones we and our testers have, but not every phone has been seen yet, and the native engine is still marked experimental in the app. Back up your saves before you play (the drawer has Import / export saves for that).

Download only from GitHub

[!CAUTION] ValDroid has appeared on pirate APK sites, repacked together with the game. In a repack the code can be changed: nobody told me about it, and I don't know how or into what it was changed. This matters most for your Steam login, which ValDroid asks for crossplay, achievements and the Steam download. The real app uses it only to sign in to Steam and never stores it. Repacked launchers are not supported.

Get ValDroid only from the Releases page. Since 0.1.4 it is signed with my own key. Certificate fingerprint (SHA-256):

F8:5A:43:7A:50:90:FB:84:B9:EB:2A:4C:BF:F5:AB:C0:7E:4D:3B:A2:D5:C4:BE:02:59:63:6F:3A:62:4E:D2:C6

You can check it in apps like MT Manager or App Manager. The real ValDroid also installs over itself as an update: if Android refuses to update your copy with the one from GitHub, your copy is not the original.

Features

• ✔️ Native engine: the Unity Android player runs the game and the game's own C# code runs on an ARM64 build of Unity's Mono. Faster loading, higher and steadier FPS and much less battery than emulation. New instances start on it.
• ✔️ box64 + native Mono as a fallback: the engine is emulated, the game's code is native. Switch any time in Settings → Engine; saves, settings, controls and mods are shared.
• ✔️ Snapdragon and Mali: the native engine runs on Adreno and Mali GPUs. The box64 engine renders through MobileGlues (OpenGL → OpenGL ES) or Vulkan through Turnip.
• ✔️ On-screen controls with a full editor: buttons (with styles and your own pictures), sticks, d-pad, touchpad, scroll bar and a radial menu. Two ready-made layouts — gamepad (the default) and keyboard with touchpad — mouse look with the touchpad or a physical mouse, and camera turning on the combat buttons. Physical gamepads and keyboards work too; a keyboard hides the on-screen controls.
• ✔️ Icon packs: pictures for all on-screen buttons at once. Two built-in packs (ValDroid Viking and Figures by jurises99) and your own zips.
• ✔️ Steam inside the app*: download the game, and move saves between your phone and PC through Steam Cloud
• ✔️ Online through crossplay (native engine): join servers and friends' worlds with crossplay on, by IP or invite code, or host your world from the phone. Steam-only servers can't be reached
• ✔️ Steam achievements (native engine): earned on the phone, added to your Steam account at the next sign-in, with a "My achievements" list in the app
• ✔️ Mods (experimental): BepInEx is built in; install mods from a .zip and switch them on and off
• ✔️ Graphics presets (Low, Very low and Minimal), written into the game once, before it starts
• ✔️ Frame-rate modes (Economy ~30, Balanced ~40, Smooth ~60, or no limit), plus an on-screen performance bar with FPS, CPU, RAM, power and temperature
• ✔️ Pause in the background: leave the app and the game freezes and goes quiet
• ✔️ Save, settings and control-layout import & export
• ✔️ Haptics, night mode, and Russian, Spanish and Portuguese translations

Project status & what to expect

ValDroid is built by one person and is in active development. It grew out of RimDroid and Zomdroid, and shares their approach.

A few honest notes so expectations land right:

• Single-player only for now. Multiplayer, dedicated servers and crossplay are not supported yet; multiplayer is the next big thing on the list.
• Mods are experimental. BepInEx is built in and many mods work, but not all of them. On the native engine, mods that bring their own x86 libraries (.so files) cannot load.
• Valheim is demanding. On the native engine the GPU is usually the limit: a base full of fires and torches is heavy, open meadows are light. On the box64 engine the CPU is the limit instead.
• Phones get hot. With no frame limit a phone runs flat out and throttles after a while. A frame-rate mode is much kinder to your hands and your battery.
• The first launch is slow. Shaders (and on the box64 engine, textures) are prepared once and cached, and every launch after that is noticeably faster.

Steam Cloud saves

Play on a PC and on the phone with the same worlds and characters. In the side menu, Steam Cloud saves: Get brings your cloud saves onto the phone, Send puts the phone's back. Sync is manual — get before you play on the phone, send when you're done. If a save exists on both sides, you choose which to keep; nothing is deleted.

On the PC, Valheim keeps the cloud per world and per character: move a save to the cloud in the game's own menu first, or it won't be there.

Needs the Steam mobile app with Steam Guard on: you approve the sign-in there. ValDroid stores none of your Steam data — only an access token for that one connection, kept in memory.

Device compatibility

• Adreno (Snapdragon): the most mature path. Recent flagships play smoothly on the native engine on the Low preset.
• Mali: the native engine runs on Mali too (tested on the G57, G615, G720 and G925). The Mali-G615 (Dimensity 8300) needs a workaround that the launcher applies by itself; if on another phone the picture freezes on the logo or in the menu while the game goes on, set Vulkan compatibility (card Engine) to On. Weaker Mali GPUs start on the Minimal preset.
• Other GPUs (for example Xclipse in recent Exynos chips) are untested.

System requirements

• Minimum: Android 11+, ARM64, 8 GB RAM, about 6 GB of free storage (the game is ~4 GB, plus space to unpack it), and a copy of Valheim you own.
• Recommended: a recent flagship-class chip and 12 GB+ RAM. The closer to a current flagship, the better the experience.

Getting the best performance

• Use the native engine (Settings → Engine). It is the default for new instances; an instance from an earlier version keeps what it ran with until you switch it.
• Turn on your phone's game booster at its highest-performance profile: Samsung Game Booster, Xiaomi/POCO Game Turbo, Realme/OPPO/OnePlus Game Space, vivo/iQOO Ultra Game Mode. ValDroid registers itself as a game, so these tools should pick it up automatically.
• Pick a graphics preset. The most FPS: Minimal on the native engine, Very low on the box64 engines. Lower the render resolution if the GPU struggles.
• Pick a frame-rate mode instead of no limit for long sessions. You'll get steadier FPS and less heat.
• Close background apps so the game gets the RAM and CPU to itself.

How it works

Valheim officially ships for x86_64 only. ValDroid runs it on ARM64 in one of two ways:

• Native engine: Unity's own Android player (the same engine version the game was built with) loads the game's data, and the game's C# code runs on a native ARM64 build of Unity's Mono through il2mono, ValDroid's bridge between the player and the Mono runtime. Nothing is emulated. A small managed bridge inside the game drives the on-screen controls and applies the launcher's settings; a Vulkan shim between the engine and the driver takes care of the phones that need it.
• box64 engine: box64 emulates the x86_64 Linux build of the Unity engine in-process, the game's C# code runs on the native ARM64 Mono, graphics go to the GPU through MobileGlues or Zink, and touch and gamepad input is injected through an X server.

Build

• Android Studio (its bundled JBR), Android SDK and NDK
• box64/ is our own fork of box64, built into the app from this repository
• The native engine module (unity/) is built when NATIVE_ENGINE is set: the Unity Android player is downloaded from Unity's servers at build time (it is not stored in this repository) and patched by tools/unity-native/; the managed bridge is compiled by tools/unity-native/build_bridge.sh
• libmobileglues.so ships unmodified from MobileGlues in the bundled libraries

Supporting development

This is an independent project. To help keep it going, contributions are welcome via Ko-Fi.

Feedback

Please report issues or request features via GitHub Issues, or join us on r/ValDr0id. The quickest way to report a problem is Report a bug in the in-app menu: pick your email app, add a short description of what happened, and send. The logs are attached for you.

Credits & Third-Party Sources

• Unity Android player and the Unity Input System: the native engine's runtime, downloaded at build time and used under Unity's licence (see NOTICE)
• Mono (Unity fork): the native ARM64 runtime for the game's code, and its class libraries as build-time references
• box64: x86_64 → ARM64 emulation for the box64 engine
• MobileGlues by MobileGL-Dev: OpenGL → OpenGL ES renderer
• Mesa / Zink / Turnip: Vulkan rendering and the Adreno Vulkan driver
• Swappy (Android Games SDK frame pacing), through Unity's wrapper
• BepInEx: mod loading
• gbe_fork (LGPL-3.0): offline Steam API for the game
• JavaSteam and Bouncy Castle: Steam sign-in, downloads and Steam Cloud
• liblinkernsbypass: Android linker namespace access
• Figures by jurises99: an icon pack contributed by jurises99
• RimDroid and Zomdroid: the launchers ValDroid grew out of

Valheim is a trademark of Iron Gate AB. ValDroid is not affiliated with or endorsed by Iron Gate or Coffee Stain.