Tag: push

Updating files and folders to Android device with one click via adb

I like to keep an updated copy of certain files on my Android phone at all times, such as the latest copy of certain code so I can look at it when I’m on the train.

I’ve done it in quite a few different ways:

  • Mount SD card as a removable storage device via USB
  • Run an FTP server on my phone and transfer files over wifi
  • Bluetooth file transfer

But these are all tedious because they’re all manual and they take too long.

Then I realised that ADB push and ADB shell are run from the command line/terminal, which means I can run a batch script. (A batch script is a text file with commands written that all run one after another in the command line)

Now all I need to do is click the file on my desktop and the files get updated within a fraction of a second on my phone.

So here’s an example version of my batch file that automatically updates a folder on my phone:

‘rm -r’ delete the folder and everything in it.

‘mkdir’ creates a folder by that name.

‘push’ copies the folder contents from the first argument to the second argument.

Note for those running emulators on their computers: Add ‘-d’ after the word adb on each line to send the commands to a device and not an emulator.

All that’s left is to write it up in Notepad and save it as Filename.bat. After that, just double-click the file and the operation should run in a fraction of a second.

ADB ‘Push: Permission Denied’ on Android adb shell push

I just spent a little while trying to figure out why I was getting ‘push: permission denied’ when running:

I did some googling to no avail.

Then I remembered that pushing and pulling is not done in the shell, it’s just done with adb.

Thus, it should have been:

Which succeeds. I know it’s a silly error to make, but I thought I’d share this in case anybody else uses the adb shell push instead of regular adb push and can’t figure out why permission is denied.