PokiTavern installs as an ordinary Android app. There is no Termux setup, no Node.js, no PC left running at home, and no Play Store account. Install it once and the SillyTavern server starts inside the app. PokiTavern is not affiliated with the SillyTavern project.
1.Why the file is around 200 MB
Because the app carries the whole on-device inference runtime, not just a user interface. Version 1.1.2 measures 202 MB: the LiteRT engine and its GPU and NPU backends take most of that, and the SillyTavern frontend the app serves adds about 15 MB. You pay the size once; updates afterwards are handled in-app.
The language model is not in the package. On first run you
pick one from the list inside the app, currently Qwen3 0.6B (about 614 MB),
Gemma 4 E2B (about 2.6 GB) or Gemma 4 E4B (about 3.7 GB), and download it
once over Wi-Fi. The models are free and come from public Hugging Face
mirrors; you can also paste the URL of any public
.litertlm file. After that, replies work in airplane mode.
2.Installing the APK
Open the downloaded file and Android will ask whether to allow installs from your browser. That prompt is expected for any app distributed outside the Play Store, and the permission applies only to the browser you grant it to. PokiTavern requires Android 7.0 or newer.
3.Verifying what you installed
Every release is published with its sha256 digest, shown above and served from the same manifest the app reads. The in-app updater checks that digest itself before installing, so a corrupted or substituted file is rejected rather than run.
4.Updates
The app checks for new releases on its own, downloads over a CDN, and verifies each byte before prompting you to install. Returning to this page for later versions is not necessary.
5.iOS
The iOS build is in progress and not yet on the App Store. The waitlist on the home page is the only notice we send.