Ten basic Android terminal commands you should know. For a lot of us, the fact that we can plug our Android phone or tablet into our computer and interact with it is a big plus. Besides the times when we've broken something and need to fix it, there are plenty of reasons why an advanced Android user would want to talk to his or her device. To do that, you need to have a few tools and know a few commands. That's what we're going to talk about today. Koush’s Universal ADB Drivers. If you can’t connect a device to a Windows computer using the ADB protocol, then I recommend installing Koush’s Universal ADB Drivers.Android Software Links: For the Android Mobile Telephone/Tablet Operating System by Google. Content by Respective Authors. Granted, this won't be the end- all be- all discussion of adb commands, but there are 1. The tools are easy. If you're a Mac or Linux user, you'll want to install the SDK as explained at the Android developers site. It's not hard, and you don't have the whole driver mess that Windows users do. Follow the directions and get things set up while I talk to the Windows using folks for a minute. If you're using Windows, things are easier and harder at the same time. Download this file. Open the zip file and you'll see a folder named android- tools. Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google, based on the Linux kernel and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Google’s confectionery legacy of Android operating systems has enough digital sugar to make you nauseous. It all started in 2009 with Android 1.5 Cupcake and now. Drag that folder somewhere easy to get to. Next, visit the manufacturers page for your device and install the adb and fastboot drivers for Windows. You'll need this so that your computer can talk to your Android device. If you hit a snag, visit the forums and somebody is bound to be able to help you through it. Now that we're all on the same page, enable USB debugging on your device (see your devices manual if you need help finding it, and remember it was hidden in Android 4. Now skip past the break and let's begin! The adb devices command. The adb devices command is the most important one of the bunch, as it's what is used to make sure your computer and Android device are communicating. That's why we're covering it first. If you're a pro at the operating system on your computer, you'll want to add the directory with the Android tools to your path. If you're not, no worries. Just start up your terminal or command console and point it at the folder with the tools in it. This will be the file you downloaded earlier if you use Windows, or the platform- tools folder in the fully installed Android SDK. Windows users have another easy shortcut here, and can simply Shift + right click on the folder itself to open a console in the right spot. Mac and Linux users need to navigate there once the terminal is open, or install an extension for your file manager to do the same right click magic that's in Windows by default. Once you're sure that you are in the right folder, type "adb devices" (without the quotes) at the command prompt. If you get a serial number, you're good to go! If you don't, make sure you're in the right folder and that you have the device driver installed correctly if you're using Windows. And be sure you have USB debugging turned on! Now that we have everything set up, let's look at a few more commands. If you want to move a file onto your Android device programmatically, you want to use the adb push command. You'll need to know a few parameters, namely the full path of the file you're pushing, and the full path to where you want to put it. Let's practice by placing a short video (in my case it's a poorly done cover of the Rick James tune Superfreak) into the Movies folder on your device storage. I copied the superfreak. I didn't need to type out a long path to my desktop. I suggest you do the same. I jumped back to the command line and typed "adb push superfreak. Movies/" and the file copied itself to my Nexus 4, right in the Movies folder. If I hadn't dropped the file into my tools folder, I would have had to specify the full path to it - - something like C: \Users\Jerry\Desktop\superfreak. Either way works, but it's always easier to just drop the file into your tools folder and save the typing. You also have to specify the full path on your device where you want the file to go. Use any of the popular Android file explorer apps from Google Play to find this. Windows users need to remember that on Android, you use forward slashes (one of these - - / ) to switch folders because it's Linux. The adb pull command. If adb push sends files to your Android device, it stands to reason the adb pull command gets them out. That's exactly what it does, and it works the same way as the adb push command did. You need to know both the path of the file you want to pull off, as well as the path you want it placed into. You can leave the destination path blank and it will drop the file into your tools folder to make things easy. In this example, I did it the hard way so you can see what it looks like. The path of the file on the device is "/sdcard/Movies/superfreak. I put it on my Windows 8 desktop at "C: \Users\Jerry\Desktop". Again, the easy way it to just let it drop into your tools folder by not giving a destination, which would have been "adb pull /sdcard/Movies/superfreak. Remember your forwards slash for the Android side, and you'll have no problems here. The adb reboot command. This is exactly what you think it is - - a way to reboot your device from the command line. Running it is simple, just type "adb reboot" and enter. Before you say "I can just push the button!" you have to understand that these commands can be scripted, and your device can reboot in the middle of a script if you need it to. And it's a good segue to number five. The adb reboot- bootloader and adb reboot recovery commands. Not only can you reboot your device, you can specify that it reboots to the bootloader. This is awfully handy, as sometimes those button combos are touchy, and if you have a lot of devices you can never remember them all. Some devices (the LG Optimus Black comes to mind) don't even a way to boot to the bootloader without this command. And once again, being able to use this command in a script is priceless. Doing it is easy, just type "adb reboot- bootloader" and hit the enter key. Most devices can also boot to the recovery directly with the "adb reboot recovery" (note there is no hyphen in this one) and some can't. It won't hurt anything to try, and if yours can't nothing will happen. The fastboot devices command. When you're working in the bootloader, adb no longer works. You're not yet booted into Android, and the debugging tools aren't active to communicate with. We use the fastboot command in it's place. Fastboot is probably the most powerful tool available, and many devices don't have it enabled. If you're does, you need to be sure things are communicating. That's where the fastboot devices command comes into play. At the prompt, just type in "fastboot devices" and you should see a serial number, just like the adb devices command we looked at earlier. If things aren't working and you are using Windows, you likely have a driver issue. Hit those forums for the answer. The fastboot oem unlock command. The holy grail of Android commands, fastboot oem unlock does one thing, and one thing only - - unlocks your Nexus device (or an HTC device using their official tool). If you're using a phone from a different manufacturer, you have a different method of unlocking things - - maybe with ODIN or . We're including it because even if you don't need it, it's an important part of Android's openness. Google doesn't care what we do with phones or tablets that we've bought, and include this easy way to crack them open. That's something you usually don't see from any tech company, and a big part of the reason why many of us choose Android. Using it is easy enough. Once you've used fastboot devices to make sure everything is communicating, just type "fastboot oem unlock" at the prompt and hit enter. Look at your device, read carefully, and choose wisely. Protip: Using "fastboot oem unlock" will erase everything on your device. The adb shell command. The adb shell command confuses a lot of folks. There are two ways to use it, one where you send a command to the device to run in its own command line shell, and one where you actually enter the device's command shell from your terminal. In the image above, I'm inside the device shell, listing the flies and folders on the device. Getting there is easy enough, just type "adb shell" and enter. Once inside, you can escalate yourself to root if you need to. I'll warn you, unless you're familiar with an ash or bash shell, you need to be careful here - - especially if you're root. Things can turn south quickly if you're not careful. If you're not familiar, ash and bash are command shells that a lot of folks use on their Linux or Mac computers.
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