Here’s a quick breakdown of what Code on the Go needs to run smoothly on an Android phone or tablet.

Code on the Go eliminates the need for a second computer when building Android apps, a problem that’s existed for decades in app development. For the hundreds of millions of people worldwide whose only computer is their phone, this isn’t just convenient, it’s what makes Android development possible at all for them.

Code on the Go’s plugin system gives you access to a lean, personalized IDE by letting you choose only the plugins you actually need, which matters especially on a phone where storage is limited. We’ve just released a new batch of community and ADFA-built plugins covering everything from Sketch-to-UI and Python/Flask support to a Material icons library, a custom NDK environment, and a billable time tracker for freelance developers.

CoGo received its first community pull request from a visually impaired developer who added TalkBack screen reader support to the app’s toolbar. The contribution is a practical example of open source development working as intended: a user who needed the tool to work better fixed it themselves, and contributed that fix back to everyone.

We rely on your feedback to make the app better with every release. Here are all the ways you can get in touch.

Building a Git UI for a phone-native IDE requires rethinking assumptions that desktop tools take for granted, from diff views that collapse to unreadable columns on a six-inch screen to the friction of switching between an editor and a terminal. Find out about the design and engineering decisions behind CoGo’s touch-first Git integration, including why JGit outperforms a terminal wrapper, and how unified diff solves the small-screen layout problem.

Release 1 of Code on the Go brings core IDE features like full Kotlin language support, a graphical Git interface, a stronger plugin system, and improved UI layouts to a phone-based Android development environment. The update focuses on making serious Android app development practical on a phone, while adapting to different hardware setups such as tablets, external monitors, and limited connectivity.

Code on the Go’s Sketch to UI feature lets developers draw a rough app layout on paper, take a photo, and instantly generate usable Android XML, all entirely offline on a phone.

Code on the Go’s plugin system brings desktop-style extensibility to a mobile IDE, giving developers a lightweight, customizable environment that fits the tight resource limits of a phone. Its secure, isolated design ensures plugins can add powerful features without risking performance or stability.

Code on the Go (CoGo) replaces the traditional workstation-dependent debugging model by consolidating the entire Android development stack onto a single mobile device. To make this possible, we engineered a new on-device debugging stack that securely bootstraps privileged access, and works only on the phone you use with Code on the Go. Come see how we did it!

Kotlin is now supported in Code on the Go, bringing the same real-time code intelligence Android developers expect from desktop IDEs (including completions, inline error diagnostics, and go-to-definitions) all running locally on your Android device. Find out about the technical decisions that made it possible to deliver responsive language tooling within the constraints of a phone-based IDE.

App Dev for All is collaborating with the Internet in a Box (IIAB) project to bring offline knowledge libraries to Android devices through an integration with Code on the Go. The result transforms an ordinary phone into a portable server that can deliver educational content and enable local Android app development—even where reliable internet access is limited.

Gemini integration into Code on the Go enables professional-grade software architecture by introducing a collaborative AI agent to help analyze and revise your code.

Our support for 32-bit and 64-bit ARM architectures ensures that professional-grade coding tools are accessible to millions of developers using legacy hardware while still delivering high-performance optimization for modern devices. This inclusive approach reinforces our mission to remove hardware as a barrier to entry, ensuring that opportunity is never gated by the cost or age of a user’s smartphone.

Android has historically been open, but Google has other plans. From mandatory fees to the end of anonymous app distribution, the new developer verification rules are a direct strike against the free and open-source software community.

The most efficient code is the code you never write. When that doesn’t solve the problem, how do you balance the need for a quick solution against the possible future need to recreate it?

If you’ve been building Android UI with Jetpack Compose, you already know it’s a fundamentally better way to build interfaces: declarative, elegant, and fast. Code on the Go’s Jetpack Compose Preview feature now lets you view your Compose UI on the phone in your hand.

If you’ve ever tried to port a high-performance library to Android and hit a wall, that wall is now lower with Code on the Go’s new Native Development Kit (NDK) support.