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:
1 2 3 4 5 |
adb shell rm -r /sdcard/MyUpdateFolder adb shell mkdir /sdcard/MyUpdateFolder adb push C:/MyUpdateFolder /sdcard/MyUpdateFolder |
‘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.