build-webview-app.sh: Turning Any URL into an Android App, No Root Required

AI;DR – This blog post and the script it describes were developed with significant help from Claude. If you don’t want to read “AI slop”, stop reading now. A few weeks ago I wrote about building an Android APK on a Linux box without root access. The result was a tiny settings-shortcut app: tap the icon, land directly on the Tethering & Hotspot settings screen, done. The whole thing (JDK, Android SDK, Gradle, Kotlin sources) was assembled by a single self-contained shell script with no system-wide installation required. That post sparked a follow-up idea: what if the same approach could package any URL as a standalone launcher icon? Not a shortcut to a settings screen, but a full-screen WebView that opens a specific page the moment you tap it: no browser chrome, no address bar, no navigation UI. Just the page. The Script The result is build-webview-app.sh, a companion to the earlier build-settings-shortcut.sh. It works the same way: drop it in an empty directory on an x86_64 glibc…