Your devices, one flow.
A seamless ecosystem for Linux and Android.
V1 is feature-complete — everything listed below works and is in closed beta. So far it has been live-tested on one device pair (Redmi 9 / MIUI + Ubuntu / GNOME); widening that coverage is what this beta is for.
Vortex gives your Linux and Android devices the seamless one-ecosystem feel — notifications, clipboard, calls, audio and files flowing between them as if they were one device:
- ✅ Open — any Android + any Linux
- ✅ Offline-first — no cloud, works with no internet at all
- ✅ Hardware-agnostic — no premium gear required (budget BT earbuds work)
- ✅ Privacy-first — everything end-to-end encrypted, stored locally
- Notification mirror — bidirectional phone↔laptop: dismiss-sync, action buttons, inline reply from the laptop
- Universal clipboard — text + images sync, with history (Super+V)
- Smart audio handoff — earbuds follow your music between devices; jump to the phone on a call and come back after
- Phone companion — call banner (accept/decline), SMS, contacts, recent calls, dialing from the laptop
- Browsing handoff — continue the page you're reading on the phone with one click on the laptop
- Proximity lock — laptop locks when you walk away with the phone, unlocks when you're back
- Notes + To-dos — one list on both devices, with due-date reminders
- File sharing — instant drop-style, Nautilus/Dolphin integration, Wi-Fi Direct fast path
- SMS login codes — a verification code arriving on the phone lands on the laptop clipboard, ready to paste
- Emoji-SAS pairing — easy AND secure: compare 3 emoji, done
Screen features (need adb — see step 6)
- Universal Control — push the laptop's cursor off the screen edge and it arrives on the phone, driving the phone's own cursor. The keyboard follows it, and two-finger trackpad scrolling scrolls the phone. You pick which side the phone sits on, the way you arrange displays; there is a little resistance at the edge so you cannot cross by accident. Push back out the way you came in and control returns to the laptop. Experimental: besides adb it needs Wayland — holding the cursor at the screen edge goes through the input-capture portal, which the compositor provides. Tested on GNOME 45+; KDE Plasma 6.1+ and Hyprland ship that portal too (untested here), Sway/wlroots does not have it yet, and X11 has no such thing at all. Hiding the laptop's own cursor is GNOME-only for now.
- Second screen — the phone becomes a real extra monitor for the laptop: it appears in Displays and windows can be dragged onto it. GNOME only (it uses Mutter's own screen-cast API), and view-only — touches on the phone do not reach the laptop yet.
- Screen mirroring (both directions) and continuity camera (phone → Linux webcam) — experimental.
| Layer | Stack |
|---|---|
| Android | Kotlin + Jetpack Compose + platform BLE APIs |
| Linux daemon | Rust + Tokio + bluer + zbus |
| Linux GUI | Tauri 2.0 + Vue 3 + TypeScript |
| Shared protocol | Protocol Buffers + Noise Protocol |
| Transport | BLE (signaling) + LAN/Wi-Fi (bulk) |
Requirements: Android 10+ phone · Linux with BlueZ (Ubuntu/Debian, Fedora, Arch, openSUSE) · Bluetooth (BLE) on both devices. Build tools (Rust/Node) are installed by the script itself.
git clone https://github.com/zoir-dev/vortex && cd vortex
./install_linux.shOne command does everything and asks nothing (auto-yes; pass --ask if
you want prompts): system libraries (single sudo step, distro auto-detected),
build (10–20 min the first time), install to ~/.local/bin, menu shortcut,
autostart (sits in the tray after login), "Share via Vortex" in
Nautilus/Dolphin, and a top-bar "pill" extension on GNOME. Updates use the
same script. On GNOME+Wayland the pill appears after the first logout/login;
on non-GNOME desktops a tray icon is used instead.
⚠ Secure Boot: installation won't stop, but the Experimental
continuity-camera module (v4l2loopback) stays unsigned and may not load.
If you need it, run once: sudo dpkg-reconfigure v4l2loopback-dkms (set a
password, then enter it on the blue MOK screen at reboot). Everything else
is independent of this.
Easiest — with a USB cable. The one manual prerequisite is USB debugging (Android security requires you to open that door yourself):
- Settings → About phone → tap Build number 7 times ("You are now a developer"; on Xiaomi: tap MIUI version 7 times).
- Settings → System → Developer options → USB debugging → ON.
- Plug the cable; accept "Allow USB debugging?" on the phone.
Then:
./install_android.shThe script installs JDK/adb/Android SDK if needed (one sudo), builds,
installs to the phone, and enables Notification access + Accessibility +
background clipboard over adb by itself.
APK route (no cable/adb): install the release APK from Releases, then enable two things manually: Settings → Apps → Special access → Notification access and Accessibility → Vortex ✓. (The app also deep-links you to those pages when needed.)
On first launch the app requests what it needs (Bluetooth/Nearby devices, notifications, later calls/SMS/contacts) — grant them all; each unlocks one feature. Skip any and the app will remind you later.
Many vendors kill background apps; without Autostart, Vortex won't come back up after a reboot. The app shows a reminder card that opens the right settings page — you just tick the box:
- Xiaomi/Redmi/POCO: Security → Autostart → Vortex ✓
- Samsung: Settings → Battery → Never sleeping apps → Vortex
- Other brands: look for "Autostart" / "battery optimization" exceptions in your vendor's settings
Extra on Xiaomi: without Developer options → MIUI optimization → OFF, calling/SMS from the laptop won't work (MIUI silently blocks those permissions).
- On the laptop open Vortex (from the tray) → "Add phone"; keep the app open on the phone.
- The radar finds the phone → click it → 3 emoji appear on both screens — check they match (that's the security step).
- Tap Confirm on the phone — done. No re-pairing after that; devices reconnect on their own (BLE or same Wi-Fi).
⚠ If another BLE phone-link app is running on the laptop, close it during pairing — they fight over the BLE channel.
Everything above works without this. Universal Control, the second screen and screen mirroring do not, and it is worth knowing why before you set it up.
Drawing a cursor on the phone, or typing into it, means writing to
/dev/uinput, and only the shell user can do that. adb is how a normal
Android device hands you that user. There is no root and no vendor account
involved — Vortex deliberately avoids the INJECT_EVENTS route that Xiaomi
gates behind "USB debugging (Security settings)" and a Mi account.
# once, with the cable plugged in: Developer options → USB debugging,
# then accept the key prompt on the phone
adb devices # your phone should say "device", not "unauthorized"
# to go cable-free:
adb tcpip 5555 # then unplugAfter that the laptop reconnects on its own — it remembers the phone's address and re-dials it whenever adb has no device.
What actually goes onto the phone. Vortex pushes a 20 KB native helper to
/data/local/tmp/vortex_inject and runs it as the shell user; it is what opens
/dev/uinput and creates the virtual mouse, touchscreen and keyboard. It is not
installed, it holds no permissions of its own, and it dies with the session. The
source is android/inject/vortex_inject.c and
android/inject/build.sh rebuilds it — with NDK r26b that comes out byte-for-byte
identical to the committed binary, so you can check the copy in this repo instead
of taking our word for it:
OUT=/tmp/vi android/inject/build.sh
cmp /tmp/vi linux/ui-tauri/src-tauri/assets/vortex_inject && echo identical⚠ Android 10 and older: adb tcpip 5555 has to be redone over the cable
after every phone reboot. Android 11+ has proper Wireless debugging with its own
pairing, which survives reboots.
"Configure physical keyboard" — Android posts this whenever a keyboard is attached that it has no layout for, and it has no way to save a layout for a virtual one. Turning on Settings → Physical keyboard → Show virtual keyboard lets Vortex keep one keyboard for the whole session, so you see the notification once instead of on every crossing. The notification itself can also be switched off: long-press it → turn off that category. Nothing else uses it.
All device-to-device traffic is end-to-end encrypted:
- Pairing: Noise XX for first pairing, Noise IK for trusted reconnect
- Runtime: ChaCha20-Poly1305
- Key storage: hardware-backed (Android Keystore, Linux Secret Service)
- Telegram: t.me/vortexconnect — release announcements + discussion group (English and Uzbek welcome)
- GitHub Issues — bug reports (include phone model + ROM and Linux distro + desktop; BLE quirks are very device-specific)
- GitHub Discussions — questions and ideas
Bug reports and issues are very welcome — especially device/ROM-specific BLE quirks. PRs: see CONTRIBUTING.md.
GPLv3 — forks stay open.
- Zero-config UX — pairing once, everything just flows
- Noise-based security — the Signal/WireGuard school: few primitives, used correctly
- Offline-first — your data never needs anyone's server
Built with ❤️ for Linux + Android users