EffectCraft for Android (arm64-v8a)

An unofficial Android port of EffectCraft — the real engine and egui interface, packaged as a NativeActivity APK for sideloading on arm64 devices.

Upstream project	storytold/effectcraft — Apache-2.0 OR MIT
Pinned commit	0b2d85b81 (upstream version 0.8.0)
Android package	ai.storyteller.effectcraft
Published APK	effectcraft-0.8.0-arm64-v8a.apk — 30.1 MB, arm64-v8a, signed
APK sha256	466cfa9e2438c1a148389564fc47c0d395ccfdb951fa21f0a148a25877d1100a
Upstream files changed	5
New port crate	apps/effectcraft-android/ — about 1 350 lines of Rust plus resources

What this repository is

This is not a fork of EffectCraft. It holds only the Android layer, so it stays small, readable, and obviously separable from upstream:

apps/effectcraft-android/   the new shell crate — copy it into your checkout of upstream
patches/                    the diff against upstream — apply it after checking out the pin
docs/PORT-NOTES.md          what was changed and why, fix by fix, with how each one was checked
scripts/                    cross-compile environment, build and verify scripts (from shared-android-port)
CHANGELOG.md                what is in the published APK

The Android layer is not a reimplementation. It is a shell crate that fills the same Hooks struct the desktop binary fills, so the real engine, the real render pipeline and the real egui UI run unchanged.

Build it

Prerequisites: Rust (rustup) with the aarch64-linux-android target, Android SDK + NDK r27, a JDK 21, and cargo install cargo-apk.

git clone https://github.com/storytold/effectcraft.git
cd effectcraft
git fetch --depth 1 origin 0b2d85b8111832a151c867f5e8a355965762b179
git checkout FETCH_HEAD                        # the exact commit this port targets
git apply /path/to/0001-effectcraft-android-port.patch
cp -r /path/to/effectcraft-android apps/       # the shell crate from this repository

# any keystore of your own signs an installable APK; a throwaway test key is fine for sideloading
keytool -genkeypair -keystore ks.jks -alias effectcraft -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000 \
        -storepass android -keypass android -dname "CN=Local Test, O=Local, C=US"
export CARGO_APK_RELEASE_KEYSTORE="$PWD/ks.jks" CARGO_APK_RELEASE_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD=android
cargo apk build --release -p effectcraft-android

scripts/android-env.sh is the cross-compile environment this port was built with (the NDK linker and the C compiler the native dependencies need, and the x86_64 linker for an emulator build), scripts/build-apk.sh wraps the build, and scripts/verify-apk.sh checks the artifact: aapt2 dump badging, apksigner verify, and llvm-nm on the .so inside the APK.

Install

adb install -r effectcraft-0.8.0-arm64-v8a.apk

or copy the APK to the device and open it (installing from unknown sources must be allowed).

On first run, grant Settings ▸ Apps ▸ EffectCraft ▸ Special access ▸ All files access if you want the in-app picker to reach footage outside the app's own folders. Without it, Android 10+ refuses a read_dir of shared storage by path, and the picker says so on those roots — naming the permission and the Settings path — rather than showing them as empty.

Verification status

Claim	How it was checked
Installs and launches	adb install -r, then am start -n ai.storyteller.effectcraft/android.app.NativeActivity; the app's own Logs/EffectCraft Log.txt starts with EffectCraft 0.8.0 starting on Android and logging enabled (android 0.8.0)
The real editor runs	tapping Open Demo Project loaded the EffectCraft Intro composition: the composition viewer renders a real composited frame (the logo, the ring graphic, the tagline), the Project panel lists the comps and folders, and the timeline shows its 8 layers with parent links and clip bars
The file picker works, end to end	File ▸ Import ▸ File… opened the in-app picker above the editor (title Import Files — Android), offering the app's own folder, its USB-visible media folder and its Renders folder. Download listed both pushed files once "All files access" was granted; ticking test-photo.jpg and tapping Place put it in the Project panel as an Image. Nothing in the app's own dialog was reimplemented
File ▸ Exit ends the process, and asks first	File ▸ Exit on a modified project raised the app's own Unsaved Changes prompt (Save changes to "Untitled Project.ecproj" before closing?) — it does not kill the work silently. Don't Save then produced File > Exit: ending the process, an empty pidof, and a task gone from dumpsys activity activities
Preferences and the workspace layout survive	prefs.json (7.7 KB), shortcuts.json and workspaces.json are written into the app's own data directory while the app runs, and its own Logs/EffectCraft Log.txt holds no write failures
The file dialogs reach a working route	source and runtime: the shell registers the app's own asynchronous file_dialog_async seam, which menus::file_dialog consults first for every command that needs a path. The blocking slots stay None on purpose, and each panel that reaches one already has a written fallback (Settings says "type the path", the Render Queue falls back to its inline name template)
File ▸ Export ▸ Adobe Premiere Pro Project… no longer fails	source: it had no dialog route at all and died with "missing path"; it now asks with a Save dialog defaulting to the Final Cut Pro XML that Premiere Pro imports. This fixes the desktop build too
Fonts come from the device	source: the font scan gained its Android branch (/system/fonts, /product/fonts, /system_ext/fonts, /vendor/fonts); without it the app fell through to the Linux font tree, which does not exist on a device. The UI renders in the platform face
Renders have somewhere to go	source, and visible in the picker: the default output folder is the app's own external files directory — on Android HOME is unset and the working directory is /, which nothing can write, so every Render Queue render would have failed on a permission error
The artifact is what it claims	aapt2 dump badging → package ai.storyteller.effectcraft, versionName 0.8.0, targetSdk 35, native-code: 'arm64-v8a', application icon present; apksigner verify --verbose → v2 and v3 true; llvm-nm --dynamic --defined-only on the .so inside the APK → android_main and ANativeActivity_onCreate; the injected android.app.lib_name is effectcraft, matching libeffectcraft.so; configChanges=0x40001ff8 (cargo-apk's default is 0x4a0)

Not verified: the emulator has no compute shaders, so the app reported GPU compositor unavailable … no compute shaders and rendered on the CPU — a real device's driver is what that claim rests on. The picker's touch targets and scrolling, and how the quit path feels, are only real on a tablet. Audio preview is silent (see below), so nothing about it was exercised.

Known gaps

• No audio. cpal has no backend for this target here, so Hooks::audio_device and audio_devices stay None: preview and scrub are silent. The codecs and the render pipeline are unaffected.
• No system clipboard. Edit ▸ Paste falls back to egui's own text handling — text typed into an egui field and anything copied inside the app still work — but a string copied in another app is not offered.
• No system browser or file manager, so Help ▸ links that would open the website or Discord do nothing.
• No stylus pressure or tilt. A pen degrades to ordinary touch.
• No system title bar, as on Windows and Linux, so the app keeps its own menu bar and header.

The rest of this set

• DeckCraft
• FilmCraft
• GridCraft
• LightCraft
• PdfCraft
• PhotoCraft
• SoundCraft
• VectorCraft
• WordCraft
• shared-android-port — the pieces every port shares

Credits and licence

EffectCraft is © its authors at storytold/effectcraft and is dual-licensed Apache-2.0 / MIT; both licence texts are kept here. The Android layer in this repository is an unofficial modification by @kanaaka, carrying the same licence. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the upstream project. See ATTRIBUTION.md.