ADB Friend

ADB Friend is a tiny cli tool, which helps you to manage your Android device via ADB. Its features were mostly designed for developers, but it can be useful for everyone.

Features

• Sync files from your computer to your phone
  • Designed for test data, skipping existing files on device
• Configure device for tests
  • Disable animations, Enable touches, ...
• Uninstall apps by pattern
• Packages command
  • Apply the immersive flag to all packages matching glob, force-stop, clear app data & cache
• Extra tools
  • adb-speed (Helps to identify sub-par cables)
• Model Context Protocol MCP Server

Install

The installation can be performed using Homebrew. First you'll require the custom tap:

brew tap mikepenz/tap

Next, install the AdbFriend CLI:

brew install mikepenz/tap/adbfriend

Alternatively, you can download prebuild binaries for release page.

Usage

ADB Friend is a command line tool, which can be used in a terminal.

# Get started with the `--help` command, to get information and an overview on the various features offered.
adbfriend --help

MCP Server

ADB Friend (Since version 1.4.0) also provides a Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server, that can be configured in popular AI Tools like Claude Desktop, GitHub Copilot, RayCast, ...

Configuration

The location and details of the configuration file will depend on the used tool. Below example for Claude Desktop.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "adb-friend": {
      "command": "/opt/homebrew/bin/adbfriend",
      "args": [
        "mcp",
        "server"
      ],
      "env": {
        "ANDROID_HOME": "/Users/mikepenz/Development/android/sdk"
      }
    }
  }
}

[!IMPORTANT]
If ANDROID_HOME is not provided, the adb-server has to be manually started on your machine. Otherwise, a connection exception is thrown.

Debug Server

You can use the npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector to debug the server once started.

# Install and run inspector in your terminal
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector

Then launch the website (with the url as provided in the terminal). Launch the mcp server using IntelliJ or the actual command.

# Default port is `3001`
adbfriend mcp server --sse true

Supported tools

Tool Name	Description
check-adb-speed	Checks the USB connection speed of an Android device for the provided serial.
clear-installed-package	Clears the package data for provided package names on an Android device.
set-immersive-full-for-package	Sets the 'immersive-full' flag for provided package names on an Android device.
force-stop-process	Forces the stop of provided package names on an Android device.
uninstall-package	Uninstalls provided package names on an Android device.
get-connected-devices	Retrieves information about all connected Android devices including serial, model, and state.
get-installed-packages	Retrieves information about all installed packages on an Android device. Supports filtering for third-party apps only.
list_allowed_directories	Lists directories that are allowed to be accessed by the file system tools.
list-files	Lists files and directories on an Android device. Supports recursive listing with the 'recursive' option.
read-file	Reads the content of a file on an Android device.
read_multiple_files	Reads the contents of multiple files on an Android device at once (reduces LLM calls).
write-file	Writes content to a file on an Android device.
create-directory	Creates a directory on an Android device.
delete	Deletes a file or directory on an Android device.
search-files	Searches for files matching a case-insensitive glob pattern within allowed directories.
move_file	Moves a file from the source path to the destination path on an Android device.
copy-file-to-host	Copies a binary file from the Android device to the host system.
capture-screenshot	Captures a screenshot from an Android device and saves it to the host system.
install-apk	Installs an APK on the Android device from a file on the host system within the allowed host paths.

With many more tools planned for the future.

Example Prompts

uninstall the 'sample' app, but keep its data

force stop the 'sample' app

Do I have a browser installed on the connected emulator?

Organize all files in the Download folder of the connected Android device

 Pull all KotlinConf related files from the Android device to the host

Release

The project uses shadow to package the tool in a fat-jar, and also do minimal minification.

./gradlew adbfriend-cli:shadowDistZip

Other

AboutLibraries

Generate aboutlibraries.json for adbfriend

./gradlew adbfriend:exportLibraryDefinitions

Generate aboutlibraries.json for adbfriend-cli

./gradlew adbfriend-cli:exportLibraryDefinitions

Example Prompt Screenshots

Claude Desktop

Visual Code

Credits

This project uses the amazing adam library from Malinskiy to interact with adb. The CLI is set-up using the impressive clikt library from ajalt.

License

Copyright 2025 Mike Penz

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.