Android Debug Bridge

This a command-line tool that lets you communicate directly with android device from your machine. It is a client-server tool that has the following components

  • A client which runs on your pc and sends commands.
  • A daemon(adbd) that runs as a background process on each device.
  • A server which manages communication between the client and daemon. It runs on the host pc as a background process

It is included in the Android SDK platform Tools package and can also be downloaded using the command below in linux

sudo apt install adb

Once installed we can list the devices attached

adb devices -l

To send a command to a specific device from the list of attached device we use the following command

adb -s device_name install hellowolrd.apk

This command will install helloworld.apk to a device specified. incase you have only one device available you might use the command below

adb install helloworld.apk

You can also use -e option to send a command to an emulator or -d to send to hardware device

Set up port forwarding

You can also port forward the requests to a different port on a device. The following example sets up forawarding of host port 3187 to device port 5555

adb forward tcp:3187 tcp:5555

Push and pull files from a device

To copy files from a directory inside a device

adb pull remote local

To copy files to a directory inside a device

adb push local remote

example

adb push myfile.txt /sdcard/myfile.txt

Issue shell commands

You can issue android shell commands using the following command

adb shell shell_command

example

adb shell ls /system/bin

You can also get a shell from the device by using the following command

$ adb shell 
shell@ $

Activity manager

Inside the adb shell you can use the activity manager to perform some actions such as start an activity, force stop a process, broadcast an intent, modify the device screen properties and more

syntax

am command

You can issue a command without entering a remote shell

adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW

example

adb shell am start -n com.example.app/.MainActivity

This starts the mainactivity of example app. You can start any activity in the app by replacing it with the .MainActivity

You can read about all activity manager commands from android

Package manager

You can use package manager(pm) to perform actions and queries on app packages installed on device.

pm command

You can issue a command without entering a remote shell. This will uninstall the specified app

adb shell pm unistall com.example.app

To install a package

pm install path_to_package

To list all packages

pm list packages

To list all users

pm list users

To print the path to a package

pm path package_name

You can read about all package manager commands from android

Device policy manager (dpm)

Helps you develop and test your device management apps

dpm command

available dpm commands from android

Take screenshot 

screencap filename

example we take a screenshot and pull it

$ adb shell
shell@ $ screencap /sdcard/screen.png
shell@ $ exit
$ adb pull /sdcard/screen.png

Record a video 

screenrecord filename

example

$ adb shell
shell@ $ screenrecord --verbose /sdcard/demo.mp4
(press COntrol + C to stop)
shell@ $ exit
$ adb pull /sdcard/demo.mp4

To learn more about the Android debug bridge and tools read this