Develop Reference

Run ADB shell on OS X

I want to enter a simple adb shell command, so I navigated to ...\sdk\platform-tools\adb.exe, and opened it. However, I am unable to type in it!
What is the solution?

.exe files are executable files for the Windows OS. They will not work on OSX.
There is a program called Terminal that is installed in OSX that you can use to run the adb shell command. You must open up a Terminal and navigate to the directory that is shown in your screenshot, and then you can run the command
./adb shell and it should work.
Alternatively, you can use the Terminal in Android Studio to perform the same operation.

Here is how I change my directory to platform-tools on a mac terminal:
Search the finder for "platform-tools". Then right-click on it, and left-click on "get info". You'll see a little window pop up with all the info for that folder.
Copy the "where", which is the file path.
Then paste into your terminal like this:
cd /Users/[user-name]/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools
Be sure to add /platform tools on after pasting the path to the folder.
Then hit return. Your terminal should then be pointed to that folder and you can invoke the adb commands by using "./adb [whatever command]".
Or you can invoke adb shell commands: for example let's say you want to enable Analytics Debug mode on an Android device. Use the following command:
adb shell setprop debug.firebase.analytics.app [your_package_name]

Use adb pull to copy app's file from phone (not rooted)

I am using a MacBook as my development machine. My Android phone is not rooted. I want to copy my Android app's file from phone to my MacBook. I tried the following:
Connect Android phone to MacBook (Developer's option is enabled)
adb pull /data/data/com.my.app/app_data/data ~/Documents/my/app/
where /data/data/com.my.app/app_data/data is the file path on phone, and ~/Documents/my/app/ is the directory path on MacBook.
But the above adb pull command shows Permission denied.
I also tried to use su under adb shell, but it doesn't work either:
~$ adb shell
shell#xyz:/ $ su
/system/bin/sh: su: not found
So, how can I copy my app's internal file to my MacBook directory?

On a non-rooted phone you can not access the app private data directory (/data/data/com.my.app).
The only way to extract the data is to create a backup of the app data using adb backupp:
adb backup -f mybackup.ab com.my.app
For extracting the information from the created backup archive you can use the Android Backup Extractor. It converts the Android backup archive to a tar archive file.
Note: If the app specifies in it's manifest that backup is disallowed the described way does not work. In such a case the only way is to root the phone.

You have to navigate to your file with adb shell.
Then copy to sdcard:
cat yourfile > /sdcard/yourfile
Then exit from adb shell and now you can pull:
adb pull /sdcard/yourfile

creating adb pull bash command

When I run below command directly on prompt, it works fine by pulling all files from emulator sdcard:
adb -s emulator-5556 pull /sdcard/.
However when I create bash file (extract.sh) with above command and run it I get following error:
remote object 'C:/Program Files (x86)/Git/sdcard/' does not exist
As can be seen it somehow adds C:/Program Files (x86)/Git before it. These are the contents of bash file:
#!/bin/bash
adb -s emulator-5556 pull /sdcard/.
Does anyone have an idea of why it works when direcly typing on prompt and not via bash file ? Thanks

Is there any reason you're not specifying the destination directory? For example, the batch command I use when pulling pictures from my phone over USB is adb pull "/sdcard/DCIM/Camera" "E:\Phone Pics\HTC DNA" which specifies both the source directory on the phone and the destination directory on my computer. As a side note, like enedil I recommend using this in a batch file when working in Windows.

Get SQLite database from Android app

I need get SQLite database from Android app from Genesis device where user has populated by hand.
How I can create another app or any other way to get this db and save in place where I can get?
obs.: the device has root
Thanks

Steps from .../platform-tools of Android on cmd:
1) type adb shell
2) run-as com.your.package
3) type ls
cache
databases
lib
You can find Your Database Here...Also You didn't even have to root the Device
Hope this could helpful for you...

Provided you have the device attached to a box with adb on the PATH you can use this command:
adb -d shell 'run-as your.package.name.here cat /data/data/your.package.name.here/databases/your_db_name_here.sqlite > /sdcard/recovered_db.sqlite'
Or you can use Ecliplse DDMS file explorer.

VERY EASY WAY TO DO IT
In the latest releases of Android Studio (I am using AS v3.1.2) the Google team has made it really straight forward. You just have to open the Device File Explorer window which should be at the bottom of the right vertical toolbar, if you cannot find it you can also open it this way:
View -> Tool Windows -> Device File Explorer
Once you have Device File Explorer window open, use your mouse to navigate to the following path:
data -> data -> your.package.name -> databases
Inside the databases folder you should see the database you want to explore, do a right click and Save As... select your desired computer destination folder and voila!!

You can either include the Stetho library on your app,
http://facebook.github.io/stetho/
which will allow you to access your DB using Chrome's Web Debug tools
or use the following shell script:
#!/bin/bash
echo "Requesting data from Android"
adb backup -f data.ab -noapk YOUR.APK.NAME
echo "Decoding...."
dd if=data.ab skip=24 iflag=skip_bytes | python -c "import zlib,sys;sys.stdout.write(zlib.decompress(sys.stdin.read()))" | tar -xvf -
rm data.ab
echo "Done"
```
None of the methods above require your device to be rooted and the latter works even on apps that you did not write yourself, as long as the ApplicationManifest.xml does not contain "backup=false"

After trying dozens of commands that didn't work for me on Marshmallow, I've found this one that works (for debuggable apps at least):
adb shell "run-as your.package.name cp /data/data/your.package.name/databases/you-db-name /sdcard/file_to_write"
Then you simply can view the DB with aSQLiteManager for instance.

You can use this script.
humpty.sh
You should know the application package name and sqlite database name.
You can check the available databases.
$ adb shell
$ run-as <package-name>
$ ls databases/
To dump database or other file.
./humpty.sh -d <package-name> databases/<db-name>

DDMS FileExplorer contents visibility beyond eclipse IDE

Other than Eclipse DDMS File Explorer where I can see those(i.e mnt,data,system) folder and files,So i can do modify easily.

Yes you can use adb shell command to browse files of the device/emulator from command prompt or terminal
by issueing adb shell command on your command prompt you can starts a remote shell in the target emulator/device. And you dont need to broswe files from the eclipse FileExplorer view.
Suppose you want to broswe data directory then use this command:
adb shell ls /data
Note: you can find adb in <sdk>\platform-tools\ or <sdk>\tools\
Refer this for more information.