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Connect to ADB

ADB is a communication protocol specific to Android that allows to connect or control an Android device from a computer.

It can be used with a Genymotion Device image instance to:

  • Control an instance Android OS.
  • Connect an instance to a developer's tool (IDE), such as Android Studio, VS Code, JetBrains Rider, etc.
  • Access an instance shell.
  • Upload files to an instance.

Prerequisite

Android Studio

The Android SDK platform-tools are included with Android Studio. By default, they are located in the following folders:

$HOME/Android/Sdk

$HOME/Library/Android/sdk

%AppData%\Local\Android\Sdk

Enable or disable ADB

When enabling ADB, your instance becomes accessible using the standard 5555 TCP port. Since the ADB connection is neither secured nor authenticated, we strongly recommend to only open TCP port 5555 to specific hosts in your Security Group and/or EC2 Firewall.

Instead of opening TCP port 5555, you can use an SSH tunnel to make a secure the connection.

7.0.0

  1. Go to the Configuration panel:

    Configuration screenshot

  2. In the ADB section, click on the toggle button to enable or disable ADB access:

    Enable ADB

Setup SSH and use the following commands:

ssh -i key.pem shell@{instance_IP} 'su -c "setprop persist.sys.usb.config adb"'

ssh -i key.pem shell@{instance_IP} 'su -c "setprop persist.sys.usb.config none"'

You can use the POST method and call the /configuration/adb API to set the following variables:

  • Set active:true to enable ABD at run-time, and/or active_on_reboot:true to enable after reboot.
  • Set active:false to disable ADB at run-time, and/or active_on_reboot:false to disable after reboot.

For detailed usage, please refer to Genymotion HTTP API.

You can then connect the instance to ADB:

adb connect {instance_IP}

Use an SSH tunnel

Though it is possible to open TCP port 5555 to restricted hosts in your EC2 firewall, using an SSH tunnel is the most secured method.

1. Create an ssh tunnel

From a new terminal/shell create an SSH tunnel:

ssh -i key.pem -NL 5555:localhost:5555 shell@{instance_ip}

Do not close this terminal/shell or this will close the tunnel as well.

To create a tunnel for other virtual devices, just increment the port number for every new virtual device (5556, 5557, 5558, etc.).

Example

ssh -i key.pem -NL 5556:localhost:5555 shell@{instance2_ip}
With PuTTy
  1. Set PuTTy to connect to your instance.
  2. Go to Connection > SSH > Tunnels and set Source port to 5555 and Destination to localhost:5555.
  3. Click on Add.
    PuTTY tunnel setting
  4. Click on Open to start the connection.
    PuTTY tunnel save

The PuTTy terminal has to remain open during your operations. If PuTTY is closed, it will close the tunnel as well.

To create a tunnel for other virtual devices, make sure you increment the port number for every new virtual device (5556, 5557, 5558, etc.)

2. Connect ADB to the instance

  1. Open another shell to run other commands.
  2. Connect your virtual device to ADB:
adb connect localhost:5555

To connect other virtual devices to ADB, make sure you increment the port number for every new virtual device (e.g. 5556, 5557, 5558, etc.). For example:

ssh -i key.pem -NL 5556:localhost:5555 shell@{instance2_ip}

Then, to connect this instance to ADB:

adb connect localhost:5556
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