Web development on an Android phone
March 26, 2025
Let’s say you’re in a situation where you don’t have your usual web development setup of a laptop or desktop PC with you. You are only limited to your Android phone. You could pass your time by watching movies or TV shows, or even do some light gaming. But perhaps you want to be productive and do some work as well.
This post will be dedicated to doing just that. Here I’ll list some apps and tools you can use that have come in handy for me to make this blog with nothing more than my phone.
Termius – terminal, SSH and SFTP
Since I usually use virtual private servers with Ubuntu for hosting my WordPress sites, I needed an app that would act as a terminal. Not only that, I also needed to generate an SSH key to connect and manage the server, as well as SFTP for file transfer.
Lucky for me and anyone that’s in the same boat as me – there’s a single app that can do all of this. Meet Termius, an amazing tool that will help you set up and manage any VPS, no matter what Linux distro or server you choose. Whether you want Apache or Ngnix, the choices are limitless. Customize to your liking, just as you would with a desktop Linux terminal.
Code Editor – text editor and IDE
Whether or not you’ll need a text editor highly depends on the type of development that you’ll want to do. Perhaps you just want to install a CMS, use a ready made theme and not get into any coding at all.
In my case, I wanted to make things a little more interesting and build a classic WordPress theme from scratch. Note that the task is not as easy as doing it from your desktop. Many tasks will take twice as long. However, if you’re feeling adventurous, you will indeed need a text editor. For my theme, I needed to work on many file types – PHP for templates, CSS for styling, even SVGs for icons.
I recommend an app called Code Editor. Out of all the apps I’ve tried, this one seemed to check all the boxes. You can edit files both locally and remotely via SFTP. It has many features of a full blown IDE, like code prediction, autofill, copy-paste, text indentation and many more. Do note, however, that the free version is prone to obtrusive ads, so look into “buying” it if possible.
KSWEB – local development environment
Let’s say you don’t want to buy a VPS and would rather develop on your phone locally. That’s possible as well. With an app called KSWEB, you can set up a local environment as you would on your PC with tools like XAMPP, WAMP or MAMP. Besides, you can choose what type of server to use, whether it’s Lighttpd, Apache or Nginx. You can also choose a specific version of MySQL or PHP if needed. The app also has a Pro version that unlocks many features.
Firefox Nightly and Kiwi Browser – element inspectors
Once you’ve deployed some code, you might want to validate that it’s working as expected. On desktop you have options to view page source or inspect element. When I needed these options on my phone, it became a bit tricky, as there was barely any information about them online.
After a bit of search, I found that installing Firefox Nightly and enabling an extension called Mobile DevTools, it’s possible to get many dev features as you could on desktop. Though this might not be ideal, as you’ll also need to validate code for a Webkit browser on occasion. Chrome or Chrome Dev both don’t offer this, however, there is an app called Kiwi Browser that has full blown dev tools in it. Unfortunately, the app is no longer maintained, so if you need it, search for an apk on Google.
Photopea – online photo editor
If you plan to write some content, you’ll also need a photo editor. In my search for the perfect tool, I haven’t found an android app that suits all my needs. There is Photoshop Express, but I found it to be fairly limited in how the images can be handled.
Luckily, there’s an online tool called Photopea. It’s basically a full replica of the desktop version of Photoshop, and it runs straight from your browser. It even runs fairly well on a phone browser. Though I found that running it from Chrome can be quite glitchy, so use it with Firefox Nightly for the optimal experience.
