To target my specific emulator devices on Android Studio with my ADB (Android Debug Bridge) commands, I usually need to type long ones, like in the commands below where i wanna list the contents of a directory:
adb -s emulator-5554 ls /sdcard/Android/sub/directory/
adb -s emulator-5556 ls /sdcard/Android/sub/directory/
When I am working on a new feature or a bug-fix ticket, I try to avoid typing long commands and args over and over again, especially args that are as error-prone as emulator-5554.
How to shorten the ADB commands that target emulators (Mac OS):
Open your Zsh config file with an editor. Mine by habit is Vim. Like so:
vim ~/.zshrc
Use your arrow keys to go to the very bottom of the file and copy-paste below exact code:
adbs() {
port=$1
shift
adb -s "emulator-55$port" "$@"
}
What it does is creates a new command adbs. I think the addition of s at the end is appropriate because the flag we are trying to work with is the -s flag which stands for “Serial”, for identifying specific emulators.
The way the new command works is,
- the
$1 captures the first argument you type after adbs and saves it — for example, the 54 in adbs 54.
- The
shift bit removes the first argument from the front so that the actual command to be run will NOT be adb -s "emulator-5554" 54 logcat (wrong!)
- Finally, the last line
adb -s "emulator-55$port" "$@" runs the correct command, inserting the first argument (54 in our example) where $port is, followed by "$@" which grabs the rest of the command after the 54
Save the changes to the config file and then exit the editor. In Vim I press Esc key, then type :wq! and hit Enter. IIRC my partner questions something about my :wq! usage, but what he points out, I can’t remember.
After saving the config file, run the following command to make the new shortcut work immediately:
source ~/.zshrc
Usage Example:
Instead of typing the long version:
adb -s emulator-5554 ls /sdcard/Android/sub/directory/
We can just type:
adb -s 54 ls /sdcard/Android/sub/directory/
Extra: to know what serial numbers of running devices you got, run below command
adb devices
Random thoughts: I am grateful to my very first team lead as a software developer (Peng) because he’s the one who inspired me to become comfortable with command line interfaces. Remembering how much I grew as a dev in that team due to high-traffic production databases that we were managing and debugging in realtime. Oh, the source command on the other hand, was something I learned from my current team lead, Maru. I like how much I am growing in this current team, not only as a dev, but also as a person.
Credit goes to Google Gemini for the above adbs custom command. I had no idea how to write that until today. hehe
