I have 2 variants of the same app installed on my Android device which have the same package id but different application id. I am not able to launch the application using the shell command whose application id is different than the package id.
I am aware of the following command to launch app
adb shell am start -n com.package.name/com.package.name.ActivityName
You can simply invoke
adb shell am start -n first-application-id/common-package-name.ActivityName
and
adb shell am start -n second-application-id/common-package-name.ActivityName
What I have:
I have application installed in device
I have a Mac system and I am using terminal
I am connected to device via terminal
What I am trying to do:
I am trying to launch the installed application via terminal ( I
don't want to reinstall the app and run )
I need to find the app via package name and run it
What I have tried:
admins-MacBook-Pro:platform-tools devrath$ ./adb shell monkey -p com.cnx.dictionary -c android.intent.category.LAUNCHER 1
Error I am getting:
** No activities found to run, monkey aborted.
To find the package, use adb shell pm list packages. There will more than likely be a lot of packages listed. If you know a part of the package name, you can use grep to limit your results. If you were looking for the Facebook package name, you could use adb shell pm list packages | grep facebook and it would only show results with facebook in it.
From there, you need you find the class to start.
adb shell
dumpsys package | grep -Eo "^[[:space:]]+[0-9a-f]+[[:space:]]+com.packagename/[^[:space:]]+" | grep -oE "[^[:space:]]+$" (make sure you change the "com.packagename" part to the name of your package.
Find the class you want to use from the output list. Most apps will have a class of .SplashActivity, .HomeActivity, or .Main but you will have to find the one for your app
When you have that, use am start -n com.packagename/.Class where your package name replaces com.packagename and the class you chose replaces .Class.
One thing to note. In step 1, we used the command adb shell so we are in the of the android device issuing the commands after. If you are issuing the am start command at the main terminal screen, you will have to add adb shell before am start.
I used the zebra site a while back to get this info initially so i left it here for your reference as well.
Android Studio is running quite slow in my laptop so Im planning use Android Studio just for building the app structure and use Sublime Text 3 for coding, but I want to test my app in my phone connected via USB using a command within the terminal. ADB maybe? or something else?
you can push the apk and install using adb install.
Of course, you still need to compile the new APK each time.
To run your tests from the command line use am instrument. For example to run all tests in your package:
$ adb shell am instrument -w com.example.foo/android.test.InstrumentationTestRunner
assuming your application package name is com.example.foo and is using InstrumentationTestRunner.
To verify your test package is installed, run
$ adb shell pm list instrumentation
EDIT
Or, if you just want to run the app once installed
$ adb shell am start -n com.example.foo/.MainActivity
I've been trying to install Vending.apk into my emulator w/o success. It says it already exists and fails to replace it when I use adb install -r. The icon does not show up on the screen so I can't tap it to launch the Google Play marketplace.
Therefore, I thought I could run it from my PC (MacOSX) using adb like this:
adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -n com.android.vending/.Vending
I constructed the above from examples that work in this article:
How to run (not only install) an android application using .apk file?
And I unzipped the AndroidManifest.xml file using info from this method to see if I could discover the activity name, but no luck:
aapt dump xmltree <apk-file> AndroidManifest.xml
I guess I need to know the exact command to execute the vending apk because I can't seem to find the correct Activity class. adb shell am start keeps giving me error type 3, Activity class does not exist.
Thanks
You can try this:
adb shell am start -n com.android.vending/com.google.android.finsky.activities.MainActivity
How do I send an intent using Android's ADB tools?
adb shell
am start -n com.package.name/com.package.name.ActivityName
Or you can use this directly:
adb shell am start -n com.package.name/com.package.name.ActivityName
You can also specify actions to be filter by your intent-filters:
am start -a com.example.ACTION_NAME -n com.package.name/com.package.name.ActivityName
It's possible to run an application specifying the package name only using the monkey tool by follow this pattern:
adb shell monkey -p your.app.package.name -c android.intent.category.LAUNCHER 1
The command is used to run the app using the monkey tool which generates random input for the application. The last part of the command is an integer which specifies the number of generated random input for the app. In this case the number is 1, which in fact is used to launch the app (icon click).
Or, you could use this:
adb shell am start -n com.package.name/.ActivityName
Linux and Mac users can also create a script to run an APK file with something like the following:
Create a file named "adb-run.sh" with these three lines:
pkg=$(aapt dump badging $1|awk -F" " '/package/ {print $2}'|awk -F"'" '/name=/ {print $2}')
act=$(aapt dump badging $1|awk -F" " '/launchable-activity/ {print $2}'|awk -F"'" '/name=/ {print $2}')
adb shell am start -n $pkg/$act
Then "chmod +x adb-run.sh" to make it executable.
Now you can simply:
adb-run.sh myapp.apk
The benefit here is that you don't need to know the package name or launchable activity name. Similarly, you can create "adb-uninstall.sh myapp.apk"
Note: This requires that you have Android Asset Packaging Tool (aapt) in your path. You can find it under the new build tools folder in the SDK.
Step 1: First get all the package names of the apps installed in your device, by using:
adb shell pm list packages
Step 2: You will get all the package names. Copy the one you want to start using ADB.
Step 3: Add your desired package name in the below command.
adb shell monkey -p 'your package name' -v 500
For example,
adb shell monkey -p com.estrongs.android.pop -v 500
to start the Es explorer.
The shortest command yet is the following:
adb shell monkey -p your.app.package.name 1
This will launch the default activity for the package that is in the launcher.
Thanks to Androiderson for the tip.
Also, I want to mention one more thing.
When you start an application from adb shell am, it automatically adds FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK flag which makes behavior change. See the code.
For example, if you launch a Play Store activity from adb shell am, pressing the 'Back' button (hardware back button) wouldn't take you back to your app. Instead, it would take you to the previous Play Store activity if there was some (if there was not a Play store task, then it would take you back to your app). FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK documentation says:
if a task is already running for the activity you are now starting, then a new activity will not be started; instead, the current task will simply be brought to the front of the screen with the state it was last in
This caused me to spend a few hours to find out what went wrong.
So, keep in mind that adb shell am add FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK flag.
We can as well start an application by knowing the application type and feeding it with data:
adb shell am start -d "file:///sdcard/sample.3gp" -t "video/3gp" -a android.intent.action.VIEW
This command displays available *video players to play a sample.3gp file.
You can find your app package name by the below command:
adb shell pm list packages
The above command returns a package list of all apps. Example:
org.linphone.debug
.
.
com.android.email
Now I want to start app linphone by using the below command and this worked for me:
adb shell am start org.linphone.debug
Open file ~/.bash_profile, and add these Bash functions to the end of the file
function androidinstall(){
adb install -r ./bin/$1.apk
}
function androidrun(){
ant clean debug
adb shell am start -n $1/$1.$2
}
Then open the Android project folder:
androidinstall app-debug && androidrun com.example.app MainActivity
monkey --pct-syskeys 0 for development boards
This argument is needed for development boards without keys/display:
adb shell monkey --pct-syskeys 0 -p com.cirosantilli.android_cheat.textviewbold 1
Without it, the app won't open, and you will get an error message like:
SYS_KEYS has no physical keys but with factor 2.0%
It was tested on HiKey960, Android O AOSP.
Learned from: this GitHub issue
Also asked at: How to use the monkey command with an Android system that doesn't have physical keys?
Use:
adb shell am start -n '<appPackageName>/.<appActitivityName>
Example:
adb shell am start -n 'com.android.settings/.wifi.WifiStatusTest'
You can use the APK-INFO application to know the list of app activities with respect to each app package.
adb shell am start -n com.app.package.name/com.java.package.name.ActivityName
Example
adb shell am start -n com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox/com.google.android.search.core.google.GoogleSearch
If the Java package is the same, then it can be shortened:
adb shell am start -n com.example.package/.subpackage.ActivityName
Use:
adb shell am start -n '<appPackageName>/<appActitivityName>'
To get <appPackageName> run :
adb shell pm list packages
To get <appActitivityName> lunch app and run
adb shell dumpsys window | grep -E 'mCurrentFocus'
Try this, for opening an Android photo app and with the specific image file to open as a parameter.
adb shell am start -n com.google.android.apps.photos/.home.HomeActivity -d file:///mnt/user/0/primary/Pictures/Screenshots/Screenshot.png
It will work on latest version of Android. No pop up will come to select an application to open as you are giving the specific app to which you want to open your image with.
When you try to open a Flutter app, you can use this command:
adb shell am start -n com.package.name/io.flutter.embedding.android.FlutterActivity
Replace com.package.name with your package name. You find your package in your app/build.gradle at applicationId.