Terminal

The Terminal tab is adb shell in the browser: a full terminal on the session’s device, with colours, line editing and full-screen programs such as top. Use it to poke at the device the way you would with a cable on your desk: read a property, list processes, run am or pm by hand, look at a file with cat. It works over ADB in the browser, so you need nothing installed on your computer.

When the tab appears

The tab sits after Logcat and Files. It needs everything the other ADB tabs need:

• the server allows ADB in the browser (adb.browser, on by default);
• with adb.ownerOnly (the default), the session is yours or you are an admin;

and on top of that, the device must allow any shell command. That is off by default: emulators show the tab only with redroid.shell: full (Emulator provider), phones only with adb.shell: full (ADB on phones). With the default allowlist the device runs only the commands behind the other tabs, and the Terminal tab isn’t shown at all.

There is nothing to click or allow. The page connects to the device’s ADB once the device is first ready, and the tab shows Connecting to ADB… until then. If the connection fails or drops, it shows Could not reach the device over ADB with the reason and a Reconnect button.

What you see

A dark terminal that fills the tab, with the shell’s prompt. The shell starts the first time you open the tab and gets the focus, so you can type right away. The terminal follows the size of the tab, and full-screen programs redraw when you resize the window or the split between the device and the tools.

Who the shell runs as depends on the device:

• Emulators: root. redroid’s adbd runs as root, so the shell can read and change anything in Android, and because redroid shares the node’s kernel, root there reaches the node too. That is why the tab is off by default; see Security.
• Phones: Android’s shell user, the same as adb shell on your own phone. On a phone in root mode, su works from this shell.

The terminal keeps the last 5000 lines; scroll up with the mouse wheel.

Common tasks

• Type and edit commands as in any terminal: arrow keys, history, tab completion and Ctrl+C to stop a command all go to the device’s shell.
• Paste with the browser’s paste shortcut.
• Copy by selecting text with the mouse and using the browser’s copy shortcut (Cmd+C on macOS). Ctrl+C is sent to the shell as an interrupt, not a copy.
• Switch tabs. The shell keeps running while you look at DevTools, Logcat or Files, with its output and history, and is where you left it when you come back.
• Start over. Type exit (or press Ctrl+D): the terminal prints [the shell exited] and shows a New shell button that opens a fresh one.

The adb commands that only make sense on your computer (adb push, adb pull, adb install) don’t exist inside the device’s shell. Move files with the Files tab and install builds from the portal.

Compared with your own adb

The holtdroid client gives each of your devices an ADB port on your computer, so your own adb, Android Studio and scripts work against it. Use it when you need adb push, adb pull, port forwards, scripted runs or your usual terminal. The Terminal tab needs nothing installed and is one click away, but it is one interactive shell in one browser tab.

Both go through the same policy: what the Terminal tab can’t run, your own adb shell can’t run either, and requests that would cut the session off from its device (reboot, unroot, remount, tcpip, usb, sideload, disable-verity) are refused in both; see ADB tools.

Recordings

Recordings don’t keep anything of the terminal: the player has no Terminal tab, and neither the commands nor their output are recorded. Only what a command does to the screen shows up in the recorded video.

Limits

• The shell lives in this browser tab. Reloading the page, closing it or leaving the session ends it, along with whatever runs in the foreground; each browser tab gets its own shell.
• When the ADB connection drops, the shell is gone; after Reconnect the tab opens a new one.
• Everything you change on the device is gone when the session ends, like the rest of the device.
• A device without the shell protocol (very old Android) gets a shell that doesn’t learn the terminal’s size, so full-screen programs may draw in the wrong size.