ADB Friend

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

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.