General Information

The Android Debug Bridge (ADB) is a command line tool used for communicating between a testing client (i.e laptop) and a testing device (ie mobile phone/emulator)

It is formed of:

• Client that sends commands
• Daemon that runs the commands (adbd)
• A server that manages the communications between the client and daemon

Default Ports:

• TCP 5037

The ADB server will detect emulators running or connected running devices by scanning odd numbered ports from TCP 555-5585.

Install Path:

Android_SDK/platform-tools/

If you get connectivity issues try the following:

• Start ADB before the emulator
• Stop/restart the ADB server
• Kill all ADB processes

Common Commands

Full reference: https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/adb.html#issuingcommands

Command	Description
-a	listen on all network interfaces
-d	direct adb to USB
-e	direct adb to emulator
devices -l	list all devices
shell	get a shell on device
shell {command}	run a command on a device
push /path/to/file /place/to/save/file	push a file
pull /path/to/file /place/to/save/file	pull a file
forward tcp:{local-port} tcp:{device-port}	TCP forwarding
logcat	view device logs

Package Manager

You can issue commands to the adb package manager tool to perform actions on app packages installed on the device.

adb shell pm {command}

Command	Description
list packages	prints all packages
list permissions	prints all known permissions
path com.package.name	prints the path of the package
install com.package.name	installs a package
uninstall com.package.name	uninstalls a package

Quickly Retrieve APK

If you have just installed an application and want to find where it is installed so you can pull the apk you could run the following:

adb shell pm list packages | cut -f 2 -d ":"

adb shell path <package name from above>

adb pull /path/to/app/from/above

Activity Manager

You can issue commands to the activity manager to perform system actions like starting or stopping a process, initiating an activity, broadcasting an intent etc.

adb shell am command

Command	Description
start [options] intent	Start an activity specified by intent
start -a android.intent.action.View	example of above
startservice [options] intent	start the service specified by intent
force-stop package	stop the package
kill-all	kill all processes
broadcast [options] intent	Issue a broadcast intent
dumpheap process file	dump the heap of a process to a file

Common Intent Arguments

Command	Description
-a action	specify the intent action
-d data_uri	specify the intent data URI content://blah
-n component	specify the component name with the package name prefix which creates an explicit intent com.foo.bar/.FooBarActivity
-f flags	flags passed to the intent
-e extra_key extra_string_value	string data as a key-value pair
--ez extra_key extra_boolean_value	boolean data as a key-value pair
--ei extra_key extra_int_value	integer data as a key-value pair