Waydroid in WSL2 with sound (Weston on top of Weston approach)

waydroidwsl2.md

Waydroid in WSL2 with sound

Requirements

Recommended to install Waydroid in a brand new Ubuntu 25.04 install. Waydroid needs a custom linux kernel. Actually just needs latest kernel for WSL2 with just these changes before compiling:

CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDER_IPC=y
CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDER_DEVICES="binder,hwbinder,vndbinder"

Make sure WSL2 uses the custom kernel and modules modifying .wslconfig (or using WSL Settings)

[wsl2]
kernel=D:\\mykernel\\bzImage-6.6.87.ANDROID
kernelModules=D:\\mykernel\\modules.vhdx

Setup

Download ubuntu-25.04-wsl-amd64.wsl distro from https://releases.ubuntu.com/plucky/

Double click on the .wsl file to install.

Run Ubuntu 25.04 and make sure is updated

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Install weston

sudo apt install weston

Install Waydroid

curl -s https://repo.waydro.id | sudo bash
sudo apt install waydroid

Configure Waydroid to only use software rendering (SwiftShader)

sudo nano /var/lib/waydroid/waydroid_base.prop

    ro.hardware.gralloc=default
    ro.hardware.egl=swiftshader

Make weston detect gpu for some acceleration

export GALLIUM_DRIVER=d3d12

Run weston

weston --backend=wayland-backend.so 

Inside weston desktop shell open a terminal and run

waydroid session start

When it shows 'Android with user 0 is ready' then open another terminal inside the weston desktop and run

waydroid show-full-ui

Tips:

• If Waydroid shows some weird dbus errors make sure you shutdown the WSL2 VM (wsl.exe --shutdown) and try again.

• By default Waydroid only launches correctly if the WSL2 networking mode is not MIRRORED. This is because dnsmasq tries to reserve port 53 that is already used in Windows. If you want to keep using MIRRORED networking you will need to add this to your .wslconfig (or using WSL Settings)

  [experimental]
  ignoredPorts=53
  

• Every time the WSL2 kernel changes significantly (from ASHMEM support in 5.15.x to none in 6.6.x) you need to reconfigure Waydroid or it wont boot.

    sudo waydroid upgrade --offline
  

For those who encounter

failed to connect to parent wayland compositor: no such file or directory display option: (none), wayland_display=wayland-0

You may need this

microsoft/WSL#11261

using workaround this post provided but need a slide tweak (we may also link pulse dir into XDG_RUNTIME_DIR)

The script I used are list below

#!/bin/bash
set -x
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cat  <<EOF > ~/.config/systemd/user/symlink-wayland-socket.service
[Unit]
Description=Symlink Wayland socket to XDG_RUNTIME_DIR

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ln -s /mnt/wslg/runtime-dir/wayland-0      \$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ln -s /mnt/wslg/runtime-dir/wayland-0.lock \$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ln -s /mnt/wslg/runtime-dir/pulse \$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
EOF


systemctl --user enable symlink-wayland-socket.service