Next-generation Android terminal emulator
Rust-powered • GPU-accelerated • AI-native
The first terminal emulator built from the ground up for modern Android flagships. NovaTerm combines a Kotlin + Jetpack Compose UI with a Rust core (VT parser, PTY, GPU renderer) and on-device AI.
| Repository | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|
| NovaTerm | Main application — Kotlin + Compose + Rust | Active |
| novaterm-packages | Package build system (fork of termux-packages) | Active |
| novaterm-api | Android device API bindings (camera, sensors, TTS) | Planned |
| proot-distro | Linux distribution installer (Debian, Ubuntu, Alpine) | Planned |
| command-not-found | Smart package suggestions for unknown commands | Planned |
Termux pioneered terminal emulation on Android. NovaTerm builds on that foundation with:
- Rust core — VT parser (alacritty_terminal), safe PTY, JNI bridge, 177+ tests
- GPU rendering — wgpu + Vulkan compute shaders (software fallback included)
- AI-native — MCP server, on-device LLM, command prediction, entity detection
- All-in-one — No separate APKs for styling, boot, widget, or float
- 7 color schemes — Gruvbox, Catppuccin, Solarized, Monokai, Nord, Dracula + hot-reload
- Touch-first — Adaptive UI for all screen sizes (5"–8"+), extra keys, swipe tabs
- Session persistence — SQLite + CAS dedup + boot restore
- All Android 11+ — Runs on any arm64 phone, budget to flagship, Material 3
UI Kotlin + Jetpack Compose + Material 3
VT Parser Rust (alacritty_terminal 0.25.1)
PTY Rust (rustix + libc)
Renderer wgpu 29.0 + Vulkan compute shaders
AI MCP server + on-device LLM (Gemma/Qwen)
Packages Termux-compatible APT ecosystem
Apache License 2.0