Get started with Anbox Cloud (web dashboard)

This tutorial guides you through the first steps of using Anbox Cloud. You will learn how to create and access a virtual Android device or an application using the web dashboard.

The web dashboard provides an easy-to use interface to Anbox Cloud. However, it currently supports a limited set of functionality, which means that it might not be sufficient for all use cases. If you want to learn how to manage Anbox Cloud from the command line, see the Get started with Anbox Cloud (CLI) tutorial.

Preparation

If you haven’t installed Anbox Cloud or the Anbox Cloud Appliance yet, you must do so before you can continue with this tutorial. See the following documentation for installation instructions:

1. Create a virtual device

Let’s start exploring what Anbox Cloud can do by launching a virtual device that runs a specific Android version.

Note:

With “virtual device” we mean a simulated device that runs a plain Android operating system without any special apps installed. Technically speaking, Anbox Cloud treats such a virtual device as an “empty” application, thus an application that is not running a specific APK.

Complete the following steps to create a virtual device:

  1. Open https://<your-machine-address>/applications in your browser. By default, the Anbox Cloud Appliance uses self-signed certificates, which might cause a security warning in your browser. Use the mechanism provided by your browser to proceed to the web page.

  2. Click Add Application.

  3. Enter a name for the application, for example, virtual-device-web.

  4. Keep the preselected instance type.

  5. Select the Android image that you want to use, for example, jammy:android13:arm64.

  6. Do not upload an APK file.

  7. Click Add Application.

    Add a virtual device

  8. You are redirected to the application view. Wait until the application status changes to ready.

2. Launch and test the virtual device

When the application has been initialised and its status changes to ready, complete the following steps to launch and test the virtual device:

  1. In the list of applications, click the play button (labelled New session) in the Actions column for the application to start a new session.

    Start a new session

  2. Accept the default settings and click New Session.

    Start with default settings

  3. When the stream has loaded, you can interact with your virtual device.

    Stream the virtual device

3. Create an application from an APK

To create an application for a specific Android app, follow the steps in 1. Create a virtual device, but upload the APK of the Android app.

Important:

Not all Android apps are compatible with Anbox Cloud. See How to port Android apps for more information.

Choose an instance type that is suitable for your application. If your instance is equipped with a GPU and your application requires the use of the GPU for rendering and video encoding, select an instance type with GPU support like g4.3. For other instance types, the container will use a GPU if available or software encoding otherwise.

Add an application

You can launch and test the application in the same way as you did for the virtual device.

4. Update an application

You can have several versions of an application. See How to update an application for detailed information.

Complete the following steps to add a new version to your application:

  1. Open https://<your-machine-address>/applications in your browser.

  2. Click the Edit application button in the Actions column next to the application for which you want to add a new version.

    Update an application

  3. Upload a new APK, or do other changes to the configuration.

  4. Click Update application.

5. Delete an application

While following this tutorial, you created several applications. You can see them in the application view at https://<your-machine-address>/applications.

To delete an application, click the Delete application button in the Actions column and confirm the deletion.

Delete an application

Tip:

To skip the confirmation window, hold Shift when clicking the Delete application button.

6. Inspect containers

Every time you start a session for an application, Anbox Cloud creates a container. The container keeps running even if you exit the stream, until you either stop the session by clicking Stop session or delete the container.

You can see all containers in the container view at https://<your-machine-address>/containers.

Container view

Complete the following steps to inspect a container:

  1. Click on the ID of one of the running containers to see detailed information for the container.

    Container information

  2. Switch to the Terminal tab. You will see a terminal for the Linux container that runs the Android container.

    You can run commands in the Linux container, or you can enter anbox-shell to access the nested Android container (enter exit to go back to the Linux container).

    Use the container terminal

  3. Switch to the Logs tab. You will not see any logs, because log files are available only for containers that are in an error state, not for running containers.

    To simulate a failure for the container, switch to the Terminal tab and enter the following command:

     amsctl notify-status error --message="My error message"

    Go back to the container overview, and when the container status changes to error, click on the container ID and switch to the Logs tab. You can now see the error logs for the container.

    Container logs

Done!

You now know how to use the web dashboard to create, launch and test applications in Anbox Cloud.

If you are interested in more advanced use cases, check out the Get started with Anbox Cloud (CLI) tutorial to learn how to use Anbox Cloud from the command line.

Also see the documentation about How to manage applications and How to work with containers.

Last updated 3 months ago.

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