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The adb protocol can be transported over USB or over Wi-Fi through TCP. If the touchscreen of an Android device is broken, it can be possible to connect a mouse to the device using USB On-The-Go and enable USB debugging. For example, Huawei requires entering a pincode before adb can be enabled. Some Android vendors have different procedures to enable it. After that, the USB debugging option can be enabled. Pressing seven times on the build number in the about menu makes them visible to the user. Starting in Android 4.2, the developer settings are hidden by default. This protects against computers exploiting the debugging mechanism without consent of the device user. In Android 4.2.2 or later ( API level 17), a dialog is shown with an RSA fingerprint that the user needs to accept. For macOS and other Linux distributions, the platform tools can be downloaded and the PATH variable can be modified in bashrc. For Debian, it has been recommended to also install the android-sdk-platform-tools-common package next to the adb package, which installs the udev rules which makes it possible to run the tool without root permissions. On Ubuntu, adb can be installed with the android-tools-adb package. How-To Geek recommends adding the folder containing the binaries to the PATH environment variable. Setup Īfter the device is connected to the host computer, the user needs to verify the RSA key fingerprint of the host computerįor Windows, the Android SDK contains the adb.exe binary that can be extracted and installed. Fuchsia will be backwards-compatible with adb. In 2021 for Android 12, the adb backup command was limited so that backing up user data from apps is opt-in using a per-app manifesto configuration.
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In 2020, Wi-Fi adb was integrated into Android Studio for macOS. For Android 11 in 2020, Google added adb incremental installations. For easier usage of Android Things, a wrapper was made in 2017 around manual adb commands. In 2016 for Android Studio 2.0 a 5x performance improvement was made for installing apps and pushing files through adb. In 2015, Microsoft released an Android emulator that can connect to the adb client. Since 2017, Google made it possible to download adb separately from the Android SDK. The Android Software Development Kit (SDK) was first released in 2007.
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The graphical Android Device Monitor in Android Studio can be used for retrieving information from an Android device. Some graphical interfaces have been made available. It also includes support for the Java Debug Wire Protocol.
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For example, Android applications can be saved by the command backup to a file. Features of adb include copying files from the host computer, installing apps, viewing logcat output, getting a Unix shell, and rebooting into Qualcomm EDL mode.
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