ADB Idea

If you are working as mobile tester in an Android team or you are an Android developer you know the pain of installing apk files to your test devices and you should have a look at ADB idea, which may solve your pain. Next to installing or uninstalling apk files from test devices, it is somethings necessary to kill your app, start it or even to clear the app data in order to have a fresh version of it. Usually you are using the known adb commands for that and execute them in the console or you open the device settings to clear the app data. However, this is time consuming if you are doing this several times a day.

If you are using Android Studio or Intellij IDEA you can use a very nice plugin called ADB idea to speed up your testing and development time. ADB idea is written by Philippe Breault and can be installed via the IDE plugin section, e.g. Preferences/ Settings -> Plugins -> Browse Repositories or you can download it manually from the JetBrains plugin page and install it via Preferences/ Settings -> Plugins -> Install Plugin from disk.

ADB Idea

When the plugin is installed ADB Idea offers you the following commands:

  • Uninstall App
  • Kill App
  • Start App
  • Restart App
  • Clear App Data
  • Clear App Data and Restart

In order to start the plugin you can use the quick operations popup with the commands:

  • Mac: Ctrl + Shift + A
  • Win/ Linux: Ctrl + Alt + Shift + A

ADB Idea - Adventures in QA

You can also activate/ use the plugin by using the find actions in your idea to execute the commands really quickly. Just type ‘adb’ and you get the list of available commands. Or you can use it by starting the tool via the IDE menu: Tools->Android->ADB Idea.ADB Idea Find Actions - Adventures in QA

I am using ADB Idea for quiet some time now and I must say it really speeds up the testing time during the day. I often clear the app data, install and uninstall the app and with this tool there is no need to either clear the app data through the device settings or to use the shell in order to use the ADB commands. If you are working with Android apps I highly recommend you to check the tool Github page.

#HappyTesting