Here’s how to access your Android phone’s files from the new Linux Terminal

To access files from your Android phone within the Linux Terminal environment, you have to place those files in Android’s Downloads directory. Then, those same files can be accessed within the Linux VM through the /mnt/shared directory path. You can utilize a variety of Linux commands to interact with these files, including basic commands like ls for listing directory contents and cat for displaying file contents.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to access files outside of the Downloads directory from within the Linux VM. Despite the fact that the Terminal app has the Android permission that grants it “all files access,” it can only access files under the Downloads directory. I did a bit of digging into the source code for the Terminal app and discovered that, sadly, this is by design. It would be great if Google were to expand access to Android’s shared storage to the Linux VM, as it would be useful to grab files from, say, Android’s Documents or Images collections.

To try the Linux Terminal app on your own device, you’ll need to have a Pixel phone with either the latest quarterly release of Android 15 installed or the latest Android 16 beta. The Terminal app in the latest Android 16 beta has more features like a tabbed interface, enhancing multitasking capabilities. Google is also preparing to add graphical app support to the Terminal app, which would make it possible to run many useful desktop Linux apps. While Google says it doesn’t want the Terminal app to be a full desktop mode replacement, it’s possible to still install a desktop environment, and with shared file access, you can easily work on files with tools from both Android and Linux.