Building and installing for UTM virtual machine on Apple Silicon Mac

Warning: This is not officially supported and maintained by individual LineageOS maintainers. Due to this, unlike Cuttlefish/Emulator/AVD which is guaranteed to function when built, these targets carry no such guarantee.

Warning: None of the virtio_* build targets are built by LineageOS build servers, and no OTA updates will be delivered to builds of these targets. As such, you must build all images and update the builds manually.

Known issues

Please refer to here.

Note: Swiftshader graphics is unnecessary for normal usecases on Apple Silicon Mac.

Introduction

Similar to libvirt QEMU virtual machine, this also offers a LineageOS experience inside a QEMU-based virtual machine.

The UTM app is a popular non-commercial virtual machine app made for Apple iOS and macOS, built on QEMU.

Note that we currently only document this for the use on Apple Silicon Macs.

The virtio_* targets are also suitable for use in a UTM virtual machine.

What you’ll need

A relatively recent x86_64 computer:
- Linux, macOS, or Windows - these build instructions are only tested using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, so we recommend going with that.
- A reasonable amount of RAM (16 GB to build up to lineage-17.1, 32 GB or more for lineage-18.1 and up). The less RAM you have, the longer the build will take. Enabling ZRAM can be helpful.
- A reasonable amount of Storage (200 GB to build up to lineage-17.1, 300 GB for lineage-18.1 and up). You might require more free space for enabling ccache or building for multiple devices. Using SSDs results in considerably faster build times than traditional hard drives.
A decent internet connection and reliable electricity. :)
Some familiarity with basic Android operation and terminology. It may be useful to know some basic command line concepts such as cd, which stands for “change directory”, the concept of directory hierarchies, and that in Linux they are separated by /, etc.

Tip: If you are not accustomed to using Linux, this is an excellent chance to learn. It’s free – just download and run a virtual machine (VM) such as VirtualBox, then install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (AOSP vets Ubuntu as well). Any recent 64-bit version should work great, but the latest Long Term Support (LTS) version is recommended. There are plenty of instructions on setting up VirtualBox to run Ubuntu, so we’ll leave that to you. Though it is worth noting, if you already use either a Linux distro or macOS, you can just proceed.

Let’s begin!

Build LineageOS

Note: You only need to do these steps once. If you have already prepared your build environment and downloaded the source code, skip to Start the build

Install the platform-tools

If you haven’t previously installed adb and fastboot, you can download them from Google. Extract it running:

unzip platform-tools-latest-linux.zip -d ~

Tip: The file may not be named identically to what stands in this command, so adjust accordingly.

Now you have to add adb and fastboot to your PATH. Open ~/.profile and add the following:

# add Android SDK platform tools to path
if [ -d "$HOME/platform-tools" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/platform-tools:$PATH"
fi

Then, run source ~/.profile to update your environment.

Install the build packages

Several packages are needed to build LineageOS. You can install these using your distribution’s package manager.

Tip: A package manager in Linux is a system used to install or remove software (usually originating from the Internet) on your computer. With Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu Software Center. Even better, you may also use the apt install command directly in the Terminal.

To build LineageOS, you’ll need:

bc bison build-essential ccache curl flex g++-multilib gcc-multilib git git-lfs gnupg gperf imagemagick lib32readline-dev lib32z1-dev libelf-dev liblz4-tool lz4 libsdl1.2-dev libssl-dev libxml2 libxml2-utils lzop pngcrush rsync schedtool squashfs-tools xsltproc zip zlib1g-dev

Since LineageOS 22.0 the virtio_* targets use a Mesa that is based on upstream repository. To build LineageOS 22.0 and above for the virtio_* targets, you’ll also need:

meson glslang-tools python3-mako

For Ubuntu 23.10 (mantic), install libncurses5 from 23.04 (lunar) as follows:

wget https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/n/ncurses/libtinfo5_6.3-2_amd64.deb && sudo dpkg -i libtinfo5_6.3-2_amd64.deb && rm -f libtinfo5_6.3-2_amd64.deb
wget https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/n/ncurses/libncurses5_6.3-2_amd64.deb && sudo dpkg -i libncurses5_6.3-2_amd64.deb && rm -f libncurses5_6.3-2_amd64.deb

While for Ubuntu versions older than 23.10 (mantic), simply install:

lib32ncurses5-dev libncurses5 libncurses5-dev

Additionally, for Ubuntu versions older than 20.04 (focal), install also:

libwxgtk3.0-dev

While for Ubuntu versions older than 16.04 (xenial), install:

libwxgtk2.8-dev

Java

Different versions of LineageOS require different JDK (Java Development Kit) versions.

LineageOS 18.1+: OpenJDK 11 (included in source download)
LineageOS 16.0-17.1: OpenJDK 1.9 (included in source download)
LineageOS 14.1-15.1: OpenJDK 1.8 (install openjdk-8-jdk)
- NOTE: For building these versions you’ll need to remove TLSv1 and TLSv1.1 from jdk.tls.disabledAlgorithms in /etc/java-8-openjdk/security/java.security.
LineageOS 11.0-13.0: OpenJDK 1.7 (install openjdk-7-jdk)*

* Ubuntu 16.04 and newer do not have OpenJDK 1.7 in the standard package repositories. See the Ask Ubuntu question “How do I install openjdk 7 on Ubuntu 16.04 or higher?”. Note that the suggestion to use PPA openjdk-r is outdated (the PPA has never updated their offering of openjdk-7-jdk, so it lacks security fixes); skip that answer even if it is the most upvoted.

Python

Different versions of LineageOS require different default Python versions.

LineageOS 17.1+: Python 3 (install python-is-python3)
LineageOS 11.0-16.0: Python 2 (install python-is-python2)

If your default is python3, but you’re building branch that requires python2, there are various methods to using it, e.g. symlinking it manually or creating a virtualenv for it. We recommend the latter:

Generate the virtualenv once using virtualenv --python=python2 ~/.lineage_venv. Afterwards, activate it in each terminal where you need python2 as default by running ~/.lineage_venv/bin/activate.

The path ~/.lineage_venv can be chosen freely, this is just an example!

Create the directories

You’ll need to set up some directories in your build environment.

To create them:

mkdir -p ~/bin
mkdir -p ~/android/lineage

The ~/bin directory will contain the git-repo tool (commonly named “repo”) and the ~/android/lineage directory will contain the source code of LineageOS.

Install the `repo` command

Enter the following to download the repo binary and make it executable (runnable):

curl https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo > ~/bin/repo
chmod a+x ~/bin/repo

Put the `~/bin` directory in your path of execution

In recent versions of Ubuntu, ~/bin should already be in your PATH. You can check this by opening ~/.profile with a text editor and verifying the following code exists (add it if it is missing):

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Then, run source ~/.profile to update your environment.

Configure git

Given that repo requires you to identify yourself to sync Android, run the following commands to configure your git identity:

git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
git config --global user.name "Your Name"

Due to their size, some repos are configured for lfs or Large File Storage. To make sure your distribution is prepared for this, run:

git lfs install

To avoid duplicated Change-Id: trailers in commit messages, especially when cherry-picking changes, make Change-Id: a known trailer to git:

git config --global trailer.changeid.key "Change-Id"

Turn on caching to speed up build

Make use of ccache if you want to speed up subsequent builds by running:

export USE_CCACHE=1
export CCACHE_EXEC=/usr/bin/ccache

and adding that line to your ~/.bashrc file. Then, specify the maximum amount of disk space you want ccache to use by typing this:

ccache -M 50G

where 50G corresponds to 50GB of cache. This needs to be run once. Anywhere from 25GB-100GB will result in very noticeably increased build speeds (for instance, a typical 1hr build time can be reduced to 20min). If you’re only building for one device, 25GB-50GB is fine. If you plan to build for several devices that do not share the same kernel source, aim for 75GB-100GB. This space will be permanently occupied on your drive, so take this into consideration.

You can also enable the optional ccache compression. While this may involve a slight performance slowdown, it increases the number of files that fit in the cache. To enable it, run:

ccache -o compression=true

Note: If compression is enabled, the ccache size can be lower (aim for approximately 20GB for one device).

Initialize the LineageOS source repository

The following branches are currently supported for building a UTM virtual machine package:

lineage-21.0
lineage-22.0
lineage-22.1

Enter the following to initialize the repository:

Note: Make sure the branch you enter here is the one you wish to build!

cd ~/android/lineage
repo init -u https://github.com/LineageOS/android.git -b lineage-22.1 --git-lfs --no-clone-bundle

Download the source code

To start the download of the source code to your computer, type the following:

repo sync

The LineageOS manifests include a sensible default configuration for repo, which we strongly suggest you use (i.e. don’t add any options to sync). For reference, our default values are -j 4 and -c. The -j 4 part implies be four simultaneous threads/connections. If you experience problems syncing, you can lower this to -j 3 or -j 2. On the other hand, -c makes repo to pull in only the current branch instead of all branches that are available on GitHub.

Note: This may take a while, depending on your internet speed. Go and have a beer/coffee/tea/nap in the meantime!

Tip: The repo sync command is used to update the latest source code from LineageOS and Google. Remember it, as you may want to do it every few days to keep your code base fresh and up-to-date. But note, if you make any changes, running repo sync may wipe them away!

Select the target to build

Please refer to this to help select your target.

Tip: It is highly recommended to select one of the ARM (64-bit only) architecture targets. Other targets will work in UTM virtual machine on Apple Silicon Mac too (in emulation mode instead of virtualization mode), however the performance will be much worse.

Start the build

Time to start building!

To build the ZIP archive containing UTM virtual machine package with LineageOS pre-installed:

m vm-utm-zip

If the build completed without errors, the ZIP archive will appear at out/target/product/<target>/VirtualMachine/UTM/UTM-VM-lineage-*-20250317-UNOFFICIAL-<target>.zip.

Now, transfer the ZIP archive to the Apple Silicon Mac which you wish to run it on.

Install UTM app

Please refer to UTM Documentation.

Install the virtual machine

Locate the ZIP archive UTM-VM-lineage-*-20250317-UNOFFICIAL-<target>.zip in Finder.

Double-click on it to decompress it.

After the decompression process finishes, the UTM virtual machine package named LineageOS_on_<Architecture>.utm will appear in the same directory.

Double-click on the package, UTM main window will appear, and the virtual machine will be loaded on UTM with name LineageOS on <Architecture>.

Set the renderer backend

If the renderer backend ANGLE (Metal) is used, the Android UI will not appear after Android finishes booting. It is necessary to ensure the renderer backend is always set to ANGLE (OpenGL) when using this virtual machine.

Click on an empty area of the UTM main window, click UTM on the menu bar, click Settings.

On the new window, switch to Display tab, select ANGLE (OpenGL) on Renderer Backend dropdown menu, then close the window.

Disable virtualization mode if necessary

If the target is ARM (64-bit only) architecture, proceed to the next step.

If not, please open virtual machine settings, switch to QEMU tab, untoggle Use Hypervisor, then close the window.

Start the virtual machine

That’s it! The virtual machine is ready to use.

Now, you can start the virtual machine.