ADB Commands Used in Testing

•ADB (Android Debug Bridge) is a command line tool to control Android devices

•The ADB tool is located in the directory <android_sdk>/platform-tools/. You should put this directory in the PATH environment variable.

Common ADB commands used in testing:

adb devices

Lists all devices and emulators attached to the system

Note: Once the device is connected to PC via USB cable, make sure “usb debugging”

Option is turned on in developer option and appropriate device driver is installed

adb install <APK path>

Installs the new applications on the device

adb uninstall <Package name>

Uninstalls the specific application

adb install  -r <APK path>

Replaces existing application, application data is not deleted on replacing the app.

adb logcat

Logcat is a command that reads logs from Android devices. Pressing “Ctrl+C” terminates the logcat event. To dump the logs in to a file use adb logcat –d > filename.txt

adb shell

Executing adb shell commands exposes the android shell, adb shell gives access to device internals.

Most of the standard Linux commands like “cd,ls,cat,rm” can be used from android shell

Transferring the files using adb

Most of the android devices primary media storage is mapped to “/mnt/sdcard/” so we can use adb command line to push and pull the files from devices.

adb push <file path in PC>  <file path on device>

This command pushes the file from PC to Device

adb pull <file path on device> <file path in PC>

This command pulls a file from device to PC