Deploy a Kivy and KivyMD App to Android

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I’ve finally done it .Deployed a Kivy and KivyMD App to Android .It has been a roughh ride for about three months but now im finnally here.So in this article, I am going to tell you what i’ve learned about deploying Kivy Apps what you need to worry about .

Buildozer (The Enemy)🔥️💀️

This is a tool that automates the process of Packaging Python Applications for mobile devices.Buildozer uses a configuration file called buildozer.spec,to specify the application requirements and settings .

The buildozer.spec is very simple to use for anyone who knows how to use it,so you need to be very careful about the requirements you are declaring

.Many things could go wrong if you dont follow this simple rule.

Specify all the python packages you used

For your app to run on android it should have all the required packages,for example

I deploy a task management app made with Kivy ,KivyMD and Pysondb

So in my buildozer.spec file I specified my requirements like so.

requirements = kivy==2.2.0,kivymd==1.1.1,pysondb,filelock

for an app like this one that stores data into a database you need to include the filelock package otherwise the app will crash .

The package version is also very important to specify because what you want is to have the same package as the one you used in develpment .

So this is the wrong way to do it

requirements = kivy

And this is the right way to do it

requirements = kivy==2.2.0

This willl ensure that you get the same result on any device .

Debugging

Lets say that you’ve deplyed the app successfully but, the app crashes or loses some functionality ,the best way to figure the problem out is debugging .

To debug Kivy apps on Android using ADB, you can follow these steps:

1. Enable USB debugging on your Android device.
2. Connect your Android device to your computer using a USB cable.
3. Open a terminal window on your computer.
4. Navigate to the directory where your Kivy app is located.
5. Run the following command:

adb shell

• In the ADB shell, run the following command:

pkill python

This will kill any running Python processes on your Android device. 7. Run the following command to start your Kivy app in debug mode:

python -m kivy.tools.debugpy --host 0.0.0.0 --port 5678 your_app.py

Replace your_app.py with the name of your Kivy app. 8. Open a Python debugger on your computer. You can use a debugger like PyCharm or Visual Studio Code. 9. Set the debugger to listen on port 5678. 10. Click the "Debug" button in your debugger to start debugging your Kivy app.

You should now be able to debug your Kivy app on Android using ADB.

Here are some additional tips for debugging Kivy apps on Android using ADB:

• If you are having trouble connecting to your Android device, make sure that USB debugging is enabled and that your device is using a USB 2.0 or 3.0 port.
• If you are getting an error message like “Could not connect to the target VM”, make sure that your debugger is listening on the correct port.
• If you are getting a security error message, you may need to enable ADB debugging on your Android device. You can do this by going to Settings > Developer options > USB debugging.

I hope this helps!

Debugging will show you where the error is coming from so you will know how to fix it .

I hope this little Article helps

Thank you for reading