Android emulator on Linux + GPS spoofing

Why AOSP emulator, not Waydroid

Waydroid needs a Wayland session (fails on X11-only Deepin) and has NO host-side GPS hook — you can only mock from inside Android with a dev app + appops ... mock_location. The AOSP/Android SDK emulator has a first-class GPS console command, so prefer it.

Install (Debian/Deepin, apt)

sudo apt-get install -y openjdk-17-jdk unzip cpio lxc then commandlinetools-linux from dl.google.com into $SDK/cmdline-tools/latest, yes | sdkmanager --licenses, and sdkmanager platform-tools emulator "system-images;<api>;google_apis;<abi>".

AVD path gotcha (Deepin/UnityTOS)

avdmanager writes AVDs to $HOME/.config/.android/avd, but emulator only looks in $HOME/.android/avd → "Unknown AVD name". Fix: move the .avd+.ini into ~/.android/avd, patch path=/path.rel= in <name>.ini, and export ANDROID_AVD_HOME=$HOME/.android/avd. Never symlink ~/.android into itself. Also set disk.dataPartition.path=<avddir>/userdata-qemu.img in config.ini (default <temp> wipes installed apps every boot).

ABI trap — the one that costs the most time

x86_64 google_apis images translate arm64-v8a only. Many Indonesian/universal APKs (Flutter apps on apkpure: config.armeabi_v7a.apk) ship 32-bit ARM only → INSTALL_FAILED_NO_MATCHING_ABIS: Failed to extract native libraries, res=-113. Adding hw.cpu.abilist32/ro.product.cpu.abilist32 to config.ini does NOT help.

Fix: install an x86 (32-bit) image, which has built-in ARM translation: system-images;android-30;google_apis;x86 → ro.product.cpu.abilist=x86,armeabi-v7a,armeabi. Check first: unzip -l <split>.apk | grep -oE 'lib/[a-z0-9_-]+/' | sort -u.

Getting an APK without fighting Cloudflare

apkpure/apkcombo web pages are JS+CF gated, but their direct endpoints work with plain curl + a browser UA + Referer:

• https://d.apkpure.com/b/XAPK/<pkgid>?version=latest → XAPK (zip: base+split apks + manifest.json)
• https://d.apkpure.com/b/APK/<pkgid>?version=latest → base APK only (fails if splits required)
• apkcombo: HTML contains https://apkcombo.com/d?u=<base64> → base64-decode for real URL Install: unzip, then adb install-multiple base.apk config.<abi>.apk config.<lang>.apk config.<dpi>.apk. Verify with adb shell dumpsys package <pkg> | grep -E 'versionName|primaryCpuAbi'.

Headless UI poking (no screenshots needed)

adb shell uiautomator dump then read /sdcard/window_dump.xml; grep text=/content-desc= + bounds="[x1,y1][x2,y2]" → adb shell input tap cx cy. adb shell monkey -p <pkg> -c android.intent.category.LAUNCHER 1 to launch.

GPS spoof — the actual deliverable

Two independent mechanisms; know which one works:

1. Console geo fix <lon> <lat> (lon FIRST) — adb emu geo fix ... needs no telnet auth token. Verified: dumpsys location shows last location=Location[gps -6.175402,106.827159 hAcc=100.0 ... mock]. Only updates while something requests GPS (ProviderRequest[ON] in dumpsys location), and last location is cleared on each new geo fix, so send repeatedly (2s loop) while the app reads it.
2. cmd location providers add-test-provider gps → SecurityException: not allowed to perform MOCK_LOCATION unless appops set com.android.shell android:mock_location allow first. adb root makes it WORSE (uid 0 also denied). Also needed: settings put secure location_mode 3 + cmd location set-location-enabled true + pm grant <pkg> ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION (skips the runtime permission dialog).

Helper script pattern: ~/bin/gps-set.sh <lon> <lat> [--route] (try adb emu, fall back to telnet+~/.emulator_console_auth_token) and ~/bin/android.sh [avd|stop].

Deepin host facts

X11 session + kwin_x11, /dev/kvm group-accessible, -gpu host works, boots in ~27s. emulator -no-boot-anim + adb wait-for-device + poll getprop sys.boot_completed.