Android 16 lets the Linux Terminal use your phone’s entire storage

Pixel phones are taking a step towards becoming powerful portable PCs with the introduction of the Linux Terminal app in the March 2025 update. This app lets compatible Android devices run a full-fledged instance of the popular Debian distro in a virtual machine, opening the door to running popular Linux desktop programs alongside Android apps. However, the feature isn’t quite ready for everyday professional use, currently lacking support for critical features like graphical apps and audio output, and until recently, it was restricted to just 16GB of storage space, limiting the Linux VM’s capacity for apps and files. Thankfully, Google just lifted that storage limitation, allowing the Linux Terminal to use as much of your phone’s storage as needed.

With the release of the fourth Android 16 beta, Google has uncapped the disk resize slider in the Linux Terminal app’s settings. In previous releases, the disk size was capped at 16GB. In Android 16 Beta 4, however, the disk can be resized to occupy most of the host device’s remaining storage, leaving 1GB free to prevent the virtual machine from consuming all available space.

I tested this feature on a Google Pixel 9 Pro running Android 16 Beta 4, successfully resizing the Linux disk to 42.3GB. The process took only a few seconds, and after restarting the VM, the increased storage was immediately available. According to Android’s storage settings, the total size consumed by the Linux Terminal app (including the base app and the resized VM disk) grew to approximately 45.52GB.

In a future release, Google plans to remove the disk resize slider entirely from the Linux Terminal app. Instead, the app will employ storage ballooning to dynamically adjust the storage space available to the Debian VM. This feature allows the guest VM’s storage to “inflate” to use available space and “deflate” when the host system needs to reclaim it. This approach offers two key benefits: the storage allocated to Debian doesn’t need to be fixed upfront, and it protects the host from running out of space by automatically shrinking the guest’s available storage when necessary.

Google is rapidly improving the Linux Terminal app, recognizing its key role in the company’s plans to transition Chrome OS to an Android base. Although the app theoretically allows for running full-fledged Linux desktop environments, Google says the Terminal’s primary purpose is to enable running Linux apps alongside Android apps, not to replace Android’s native desktop mode. Still, Google’s efforts will unlock some exciting use cases, and it’ll be fascinating to see the innovative ways that users leverage the Linux Terminal on their Pixels as the app matures.