ADB Commands Every Android User Should Know (PDF)

By - ​TechWiser

Android Debug Bridge or better known as ADB is a command line tool to access your
Android Phone. It is a powerful and pretty versatile tool. You can do a range of things like
pulling out logs, installing/uninstalling apps, transferring files, rooting and flashing custom
ROMs, creating device backups, etc. Moreover, adb is a life-saver when your Android device
gets bricked because the phone is unusable at that time.

Though the adb command shell looks intimidating and complex, it is fairly simple. So, here is
a list of adb commands to get you started and do some useful things in the process.

Install ADB on Windows

Unlike in previous versions, you don’t have to install a complete Android SDK to install ADB.
Simply download the standalone ADB zip file, extract it to a folder of your choice, and you
are done.

To access adb,​ ​open the command prompt​ by searching it on the start menu. To run ADB
commands, you need to navigate to the adb folder using the below command.

cd C:\ADB

Where in C:/ADB is the folder location of the extracted ADB file.

Tip:​ You can also open the Command Prompt from the same directory. Just type "cmd" on
the address bar in the Windows File Explorer

Now, connect your Android device via USB and you can proceed to test the below
commands. For further reference, you can check ​this guide​ on how to properly install and
test adb on Windows.

Connection Commands
1. Start or Stop ADB Server

Obviously, the first command you should know is how to start and stop the adb server. This
enables you to interact with your connected Android device. To start the adb server, use the
below command.

adb start-server
Once you are done with your work, you can use the command below to stop the adb server.

adb kill-server

2. Restart ADB in USB Mode

If the ADB server is already started and for some reason, the commands are still not
working. You can try an ADB restart on the USB. There is no standalone ADB restart
command. But the following command will reestablish the ADB connection via USB. This, in
turn, will cause the ADB server to restart.

adb usb

3. ADB Version

This is a very handy command because few commands work with the latest ADB versions.
Like for example, the older versions of ADB don’t let you run flashall command. So, when
you have a command in error, the first step is to check the adb version. You can then verify
whether the command is supported in that version. Following is the command to check the
adb version.

adb version

4. List Connected Android Devices

This is one of the most famous commands. When you connect your device to the computer
via USB, use this command to verify if adb can find the connected device.

adb devices

If your device is properly connected to your system, the above command will start the
daemon service, scans the system and lists all the connected Android drives. The good thing
about this command is that it lists both the state of the device and its serial number.

5. Status of Your Device

As you can tell from the name itself, this command can be used to know the device state.
When the command is executed, it shows whether your device state is in offline, bootloader
or in device mode. For a normal Android device, you will see your Android state as “device”,
just like in the below image.

adb get-state
The connection state of the device can be one of the following:

● offline: The device is not connected to adb or is not responding.

6. Connect ADB over Wi-Fi

In the recent ADB versions, you can directly connect to any Android device over Wi-Fi. All
you have to do is turn on USB debugging on the other device and run the following
command.

adb connect ip-address

So the command should be like:

adb connect 192.168.1.104

7. Get Device Serial Number

This command lets you know the device serial number of the connected device. On your
phone or tablet, you can see the device serial number by navigating to “Settings > About
Phone > Status”.

adb get-serialno

File Transfer Commands

In order to copy or send files, you need to know the exact location of the directory. Normally,
the phone internal memory is named as sdcard. So, all the phone internal folders are under
the /sdcard directory. Still, if you want to know the exact location or locate a particular file,
you can use the “ls” command. ls command lists out the files under the directory.

adb shell ls "directory_name"

9. Copy Files from Computer to Phone

If you want to copy files from your computer to your phone using adb then you can use this
command. Do forget to replace [source] and [destination] with actual file paths.

adb push [source] [destination]

Once you replace the above command with actual file paths, this is how it looks like.

adb push "E:\Video Songs\sample-song.mp4" "/sdcard/Downloads/sample-song.mp4"

10. Copy Files from Phone to Computer

Just like you can copy files from your computer to Android device, you can copy files from
your phone to computer. To do that simply use the below command. Replace [source] and
[destination] with actual file paths.

adb pull [source] [destination]

Once you replace the above command with actual file paths, this is how it looks like.
adb pull "/sdcard/Downloads/video.mp4" D:\Downloads

App Installation
11. Install/Uninstall Apps

Besides from moving files back and forth, you can actually install apk files with just a single
command. To install an app you have to specify the full path of the apk file. So, replace
“path/to/file.apk” with the actual apk file path.

adb install "path/to/file.apk"

To uninstall an app, simply execute the below command. Replace <package-name> with the
actual fully qualified package name of the app.

adb uninstall <package-name>

12. List all Installed Packages

Now, uninstalling packages would require you to get the exact package name. The package
name is actually different from the installed app name. So, to find that below is the adb
command.

adb shell pm list packages

Now the resulting output is pretty vast. So if you want to list a particular apk, you can try
filtering by the app name. For example, I want to search the package name for FDroid, so I
will use the following command.

adb shell pm list packages | findstr "fdroid"

Backup & Recovery Commands

To backup all the device and app data you can use the below command. When executed, it
will trigger the backup, asks you to accept the action on your Android device and then
creates “backup.adb” file in the current directory.

adb backup -all

14. Restore Android Device

To restore a backup, use the below command. Don’t forget to replace “path/to/backup.adb”
with the actual file path.

adb restore "path/to/backup.adb"

15. Reboot Android Device into Recovery Mode

The recovery mode helps you repair or recovery the Android device using the tools built into
it. Generally, you can boot into recovery mode using the volume and power button
combination. Alternatively, you can also connect your device to the system and use the
below command to boot into recovery mode.

adb reboot-recovery
16. Reboot Android Device into Bootloader Mode

The below command lets you boot into bootloader mode. Generally, the bootloader mode is
very similar to the fastboot mode.

adb reboot-bootloader

17. Reboot Android Device into Fastboot Mode

The fastboot mode is generally used to flash custom ROMs, bootloader, and even kernels.
Use the below command to boot into fastboot mode.

adb reboot fastboot

18. List Connected Fastboot Devices

This is one of the lesser known commands. When you boot the device in fastboot mode, in
order to check if the device is connected you can use the following command.

fastboot devices
19. Start Remote Shell

This command starts the remote shell and lets you control and configure your device using
the shell commands.

adb shell

Utility Commands
20. Take Screenshots

It is nothing hard to take a screenshot on and Android. All you have to do is press the Power
button and Volume Down button at the same time. Alternatively, you can also use this
command to take a quick screenshot. Replace “/path/to/screenshot.png” with the actual
destination path. If you want to, you can customize the file name by changing “screenshot”
with whatever name you want.

adb shell screencap -p "/path/to/screenshot.png"

Once you replace the destination path, this is how the command looks like.

adb shell screencap -p "/sdcard/screenshot.png"

Apart from screenshots, you can record the Android device screen using the below
command. Again, replace “/path/to/record.mp4” with the actual destination path. Of course,
you can customize the file name by changing “record” with whatever name you want.

adb shell screenrecord "/path/to/record.mp4"