Can you really mine cryptocurrency in Termux?

Yes. Termux is a full Linux terminal on Android, so it runs a native ARM CPU miner directly. With Primo ARM Miner one curl command installs a prebuilt ARM64 binary — no compiling — and you can mine Monero (RandomX), Verus (VerusHash), Litecoin+Dogecoin (scrypt) or Bitcoin (SHA256d). The main caveat is Android throttling background apps, which you work around with a wake-lock or by running from an SSH/adb shell.

Why use Primo instead of compiling XMRig in Termux?

Most Termux mining guides have you install cmake and a toolchain and compile XMRig, which takes time, RAM and often fails on device. Primo ARM Miner ships a prebuilt, ARM-native binary you install in one line, with the hot paths written in ARM NEON and AArch64 assembly. It is one ~508 KB binary with two dependencies, and it mines four algorithms, not just RandomX. XMRig is excellent software; this is simply the faster path on a phone.

Does mining in Termux damage or overheat your phone?

Mining runs the CPU hard, so the phone gets warm and the battery drains faster; sustained heat is the main wear factor. Primo auto-detects thermals and Android caps the clocks when the phone gets hot, so it will not cook the device, but running plugged in with the battery cool (and not 24/7 on a phone you rely on) is sensible. It is a hobby, not a datacenter.

How much can you earn mining in Termux on a phone?

A little. Mining Monero or Verus, a phone earns small real amounts — on the order of cents per day at current difficulty and price. Bitcoin (SHA256d) on a CPU earns effectively zero against ASICs and is a benchmark or lottery only. The honest pitch is free hardware and learning, not income.

GUIDE · TERMUX

Mining on Android with Termux

Most Termux mining guides walk you through installing a toolchain and compiling XMRig — slow, RAM-hungry, and it often fails halfway. Here's the shorter path: one command installs a prebuilt, ARM-native miner and you're hashing Monero or Verus in a couple of minutes. No root, no compiler.

1 · Why this way

Primo ARM Miner is a prebuilt binary you install in one line — no cmake, no compiling. It's a single ~508 KB ARM-native binary with the hot loops written directly in ARM NEON and AArch64 assembly, and it mines four algorithms — Monero (RandomX), Verus (VerusHash), Litecoin+Dogecoin (scrypt), and Bitcoin (SHA256d) — not just one. XMRig is great software; this is simply the faster, more reliable path on a phone in Termux. It's free and open source (GPL-3.0).

2 · Install Termux

Install Termux — a free Linux terminal for Android — from F-Droid or GitHub. Don't use the Google Play build: it's frozen at an old version and its package mirrors no longer update, which breaks the install. No root is required.

3 · Install the miner (one line)

Update Termux's packages, then run the installer:

termux

$ pkg update && pkg upgrade -y
$ curl -fsSL https://primolab.dev/install.sh | sh

The installer detects Termux, downloads the native ARM64 build, verifies its SHA-256, installs the two runtime libraries (libcurl, libjansson) with pkg, and puts primo-arm-miner on your PATH. Prefer to do it by hand? Grab the Termux tarball from the downloads section.

4 · Start mining

Monero (RandomX) — the classic CPU coin

mine monero

$ primo-arm-miner -a randomx -o stratum+tcp://pool.supportxmr.com:3333 \
      -u YOUR_XMR_ADDRESS -p worker1

Verus (VerusHash) — the phone-friendly CPU coin

mine verus

$ primo-arm-miner -a verus -o stratum+tcp://pool.verus.io:9998 \
      -u YOUR_VERUS_ADDRESS.phone1 -p x

Swap in your own wallet address. Within a minute you'll see Accepted lines. Threads, big/LITTLE core pinning and per-core tuning are auto-detected — no flags needed. Stop with Ctrl-C. Other coins: -a scrypt (LTC+DOGE) or -a sha256d (Bitcoin).

5 · Keep it running at full speed

This is the one Termux gotcha worth knowing. Android throttles apps that aren't in the foreground: it parks CPU cores and caps the big cores' clock speed once the screen is off or Termux is backgrounded. A Termux app session isn't in the privileged top-app group, so a backgrounded miner slows down or stalls.

Three ways to handle it, best first:

Run from an SSH or adb shell session — those stay in the unthrottled top-app cpuset even with the screen off. This is the full-speed path. (Termux's own sshd makes this easy from a laptop on the same Wi-Fi.)
Run termux-wake-lock first — it stops Android from suspending the process, so mining keeps going with the screen off (though still at the throttled background clocks).
Use the Primo Android APK instead — it runs as a foreground service and keeps the screen on, sidestepping the terminal entirely.

6 · A note on Monero & RAM

RandomX (Monero) is memory-hard. Primo builds a shared ~2.1 GiB dataset for full-speed fast mode (~700 H/s on a modern phone). If your phone can't spare that much free RAM, the miner automatically falls back to light mode — a 256 MiB cache instead of the dataset — which is about 5× slower (~160 H/s) but works on almost anything.

You can force light mode (e.g. to keep RAM free) by launching with PRIMO_RANDOMX_LIGHT=1 primo-arm-miner -a randomx …. Verus, scrypt and SHA256d have no such memory requirement.

7 · Troubleshooting

CANNOT LINK EXECUTABLE … libcurl.so — an outdated Termux package set. Run pkg update && pkg upgrade -y again, then retry.
"refuses to start / no crypto extensions" — the CPU lacks ARMv8 AES/PMULL/SHA2. Any 64-bit phone from the last decade has them; a 32-bit OS does not. Primo is ARM64-only by design.
Mining stops when you lock the phone — that's the throttling in section 5; use termux-wake-lock or an SSH session.
Antivirus / Play Protect flags it — mining binaries are widely flagged by heuristic; the source is public and the build is reproducible. See the FAQ.

8 · What to expect

On a typical modern phone you'll see roughly ~700 H/s on Monero, ~7.5 MH/s on Verus (8 threads), or ~90 MH/s on Bitcoin's SHA256d. Earnings on Monero or Verus are small but real — think cents per day. Bitcoin earns effectively zero (it's a benchmark and a lottery). No hype: a phone is a hobby miner, and that's the fun of it.

Mine Monero → Mine Verus Phone vs ESP32

Termux session on Android mining Verus with accepted shares in green — Termux, mining Verus.

← All install paths Docs →