Running an AI Agent on Your Android Device

AI agents have gotten good at operating on the web. They can open websites, click buttons, read screens, and chain actions together. What they still cannot do, at least not easily, is operate your phone.

Why phones are the hard part

ChatGPT's agent mode, Claude's computer use, and OpenClaw all run on desktop. They spawn a browser or a virtual machine and work inside it. That model breaks on mobile for a few concrete reasons:

Android is a sandbox. Apps can't read other apps' screens or drive their UI without elevated permissions. There is no system-wide equivalent of a desktop's accessibility layer that an external agent can hook into from the cloud.

iOS is even more locked down. Sideloading isn't standard and automation APIs are limited to what Shortcuts exposes. Most "mobile automation" options today require ADB over USB, a rooted device, or writing Appium/UIAutomator scripts.

If you want an agent to book an Uber, check a banking app, reply on WhatsApp, or test a native flow, you either build it yourself or run an emulator on a desktop and pretend that counts.

What Mobilerun changes

Mobilerun takes a different route. Instead of trying to drive a phone from the outside, it puts a small app on the phone itself, the Mobilerun Portal. It uses Android's accessibility service to read the UI tree and perform taps, swipes, and text input. The device then connects to Mobilerun's cloud, where you send it instructions in plain English.

That means an old Android sitting in a drawer becomes a remote-controllable device that an AI agent can operate without a single line of code.

Setup, step by step

1. Sign up and check device slots
Create a Mobilerun account at cloud.mobilerun.ai. You need at least one Device Slot available to connect a physical phone.
2. Install the Portal APK
Download the latest release from the mobilerun-portal releases page on GitHub. Install it on the Android device you want to connect.

3. Grant accessibility permission
When the app first launches, it will prompt for the Mobilerun Portal accessibility service. Enable it. This is what lets the Portal read the UI and send actions.
4. Open Settings inside the Portal app and enable:

These make remote app installs and live streaming work without needing someone tapping "Allow" on the physical device each time.
5. Connect to the cloud
Tap Connect to Mobilerun on the Portal's main screen. If prompted for an email, use the one you signed up with. The device will appear in the. Devices tab of the dashboard as a connected physical device.
6. Keep the Portal running
The device stays online as long as the app is running. That's it the phone is now addressable from the Mobilerun cloud.

Running your first task

With the device connected, go to the Playground in the dashboard, select your phone from the device list, and type what you want it to do. A few examples that work out of the box:

You can also install apps from your Mobilerun app library to the device the same way you would with a cloud device. The phone keeps its local state like logins, cookies, installed apps because it is, in fact, your phone.

The point

The interesting part isn't the automation framework. It's that the interface is plain language and the hardware is whatever you already own. An old Pixel 4 or a spare Samsung is enough to give an agent real hands on a phone, running real apps, against real accounts, without a developer in the loop.

If you want to try it, the Portal install guide is here: docs.mobilerun.ai/mobilerun-portal.