How to run not only install an android application using apk file

Question

Is there any command on cmd exe that would allow me to start the main activity of a particular android application using the  apk file of that application  Please note that I know this command which only installs an android application   adb install myapp apk   This command will only install myapp onto the emulator and I have to manually run this application from the emulator  by performing single click on its icon     What I want to do is use a command which not only installs the application but also starts its main activity  please note that I have only its  apk file so I don t know what the package name or any activity name is

User · Answer

You can t install and run in one go - but you can certainly use adb to start your already installed application  Use adb shell am start to fire an intent - you will need to use the correct intent for your application though  A couple of examples   adb shell am start -a android intent action MAIN -n com android settings  Settings    will launch Settings  and  adb shell am start -a android intent action MAIN -n com android browser  BrowserActivity    will launch the Browser   If you want to point the Browser at a particular page  do this  adb shell am start -a android intent action VIEW -n com android browser  BrowserActivity http   www google co uk   If you don t know the name of the activities in the APK  then do this  aapt d xmltree  lt path to apk gt  AndroidManifest xml   the output content will includes a section like this      E  activity  line 32      A  android theme 0x01010000   0x7f080000     A  android label 0x01010001   0x7f070000     A  android name 0x01010003   com anonymous MainWindow      A  android launchMode 0x0101001d   type 0x10 0x3     A  android screenOrientation 0x0101001e   type 0x10 0x1     A  android configChanges 0x0101001f   type 0x11 0x80     E  intent-filter  line 33        E  action  line 34          A  android name 0x01010003   android intent action MAIN          XE   line 34    That tells you the name of the main activity  MainWindow   and you can now run  adb shell am start -a android intent action MAIN -n com anonymous  MainWindow

User · Answer

First to install your app   adb install -r path ProjectName apk   The great thing about the -r is it works even if it wasn   t already installed   To launch MainActivity  so you can launch it like   adb shell am start -n com other ProjectName  MainActivity

User · Answer

I put this in my makefile  right the next line after adb install      adb shell monkey -p  cat  identifier  -c android intent category LAUNCHER 1   For this to work there must be a  identifier file with the app s bundle identifier in it  like com company ourfirstapp  No need to hunt activity name

User · Answer

if you re looking for the equivalent of  adb run myapp apk   you can use the script shown in this answer    linux and mac only - maybe with cygwin on windows   linux mac users can also create a script to run an apk with something like the following   create a file named  adb-run sh  with these 3 lines   pkg   aapt dump badging  1 awk -F      package   print  2   awk -F      name    print  2    act   aapt dump badging  1 awk -F      launchable-activity   print  2   awk -F      name    print  2    adb shell am start -n  pkg  act   then  chmod  x adb-run sh  to make it executable   now you can simply   adb-run sh myapp apk  The benefit here is that you don t need to know the package name or launchable activity name  Similarly  you can create  adb-uninstall sh myapp apk   Note  This requires that you have aapt in your path  You can find it under the new build tools folder in the SDK

User · Answer

When you start the app from the GUI  adb logcat might show you the corresponding action category component        adb logcat           I ActivityManager  1607   START  act android intent action MAIN cat  android intent category LAUNCHER  flg 0x10200000 cmp com android browser  BrowserActivity  from pid 1792

User · Answer

This is a solution in shell script   apk   apk path    1  Install apk  adb install   apk  sleep 1   2  Get package name  pkg info  aapt dump badging   apk    head -1   awk -F       print  2    eval  pkg info  gt   dev null   3  Start app  pkg name  name adb shell monkey -p    pkg name   -c android intent category LAUNCHER 1

User · Answer

I created terminal aliases to install and run an apk using a single command      I use ZSH  here is what I added to my  zshrc file  config file     at    zshrc    If you use bash shell  append it to    bashrc    Have the adb accessible  by including it in the PATH export PATH   usr local bin  usr bin  bin  usr sbin  sbin  opt X11 bin path to android sdk platform-tools      Setup your Android SDK path in ANDROID HOME variable export ANDROID HOME   sdks android sdk    Setup aapt tool so it accessible using a single command alias aapt   ANDROID HOME build-tools 27 0 3 aapt     Install APK to device   Use as  apkinstall app-debug apk alias apkinstall  adb devices   tail -n  2   cut -sf 1   xargs -I X adb -s X install -r  1    As an alternative to apkinstall  you can also do just   gradlew installDebug    Alias for building and installing the apk to connected device   Run at the root of your project     buildAndInstallApk alias buildAndInstallApk    gradlew assembleDebug  amp  amp  apkinstall   app build outputs apk debug app-debug apk     Launch your debug apk on your connected device   Execute at the root of your android project   Usage  launchDebugApk alias launchDebugApk  adb shell monkey -p  aapt dump badging   app build outputs apk debug app-debug apk   grep -e  package  name    cut -d    -f 2  1     ------------- Single command to build install launch apk------------    Execute at the root of your android project   Use as  buildInstallLaunchDebugApk alias buildInstallLaunchDebugApk  buildAndInstallApk  amp  amp  launchDebugApk       Note  Here I am building  installing and launching the debug apk which is usually in the path    app build outputs apk debug app-debug apk  when this command is executed from the root of the project      If you would like to install and run any other apk  simply replace the path for debug apk with path of your own apk   Here is the gist for the same  I created this because I was having trouble working with Android Studio build reaching around 28 minutes  so I switched over to terminal builds which were around 3 minutes  You can read more about this here  Explanation   The one alias that I think needs explanation is the launchDebugApk alias  Here is how it is broken down   The part aapt dump badging   app build outputs apk debug app-debug apk   grep -e  package  name basically uses the aapt tool to extract the package name from the apk   Next  is the command  adb shell monkey -p com package name 1  which basically uses the monkey tool to open up the default launcher activity of the installed app on the connected device  The part of com package name is replaced by our previous command which takes care of getting the package name from the apk

[android] How to run (not only install) an android application using .apk file?

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