Android adb cheat sheet

Control Your Android Phone with ADB

ADB, or Android Debug Bridge, is a tool that lets you send commands to your Android phone from your computer. It's really helpful for developers, testers, and anyone who wants more direct control.

Here are some commands you might find useful:

Getting into the Phone's Shell

Your Android phone has a command line inside. You can get to it with this command:

adb shell

Managing Apps

You can install, update, or uninstall apps using ADB.

Install an APK

adb install MyApp.apk

Force Update or Reinstall (Keep Data)

Use this if you want to update an app but keep all its data.

adb install -r MyApp.apk

Uninstall an App

To remove an app:

adb uninstall MyApp.apk

Capturing Your Screen

Take pictures or videos of what's on your phone's screen.

Capture an Image (Screenshot)

adb shell screencap -p /sdcard/image.png

Capture a Video (Screenrecord)

adb shell screenrecord -p /sdcard/video.mp4

Get Files from Your Phone

After capturing, you'll want the file on your computer. Use pull.

adb pull /sdcard/image.png ./

(Replace /sdcard/image.png with your file's location and ./ with where you want to save it on your computer)

Controlling Device Display Features

Toggle things like showing where you touch the screen.

Enable Show Touches

adb shell content insert \ 
--uri content://settings/system \ 
--bind name:s:show_touches \ 
--bind value:i:1

Disable Show Touches

adb shell content insert \ 
--uri content://settings/system \ 
--bind name:s:show_touches \ 
--bind value:i:0