Connect your desktop to an Android emulator with adb

If you don’t use Android Studio, download Google’s standalone Platform-Tools package (latest is 37.0.1, July 2026) and unzip it.

cd ~
curl -LO https://dl.google.com/android/repository/platform-tools-latest-linux.zip
unzip platform-tools-latest-linux.zip
# adb is now in ~/platform-tools/

cd ~
curl -LO https://dl.google.com/android/repository/platform-tools-latest-darwin.zip
unzip platform-tools-latest-darwin.zip
# adb is now in ~/platform-tools/

cd $HOME
curl.exe -LO https://dl.google.com/android/repository/platform-tools-latest-windows.zip
Expand-Archive .\platform-tools-latest-windows.zip -DestinationPath $HOME
# adb.exe is now in $HOME\platform-tools\

The emulator itself is not in Platform-Tools. Install it in Android Studio under SDK Manager → SDK Tools → Android Emulator.

Point ANDROID_HOME at your SDK folder and add platform-tools and emulator to PATH. The paths below are Android Studio’s default SDK locations. Change them if you installed the SDK somewhere else.

echo 'export ANDROID_HOME="$HOME/Android/Sdk"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools:$ANDROID_HOME/emulator"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

echo 'export ANDROID_HOME="$HOME/Library/Android/sdk"' >> ~/.zprofile
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools:$ANDROID_HOME/emulator"' >> ~/.zprofile
source ~/.zprofile

$sdk = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Android\Sdk"
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("ANDROID_HOME", $sdk, "User")
$userPath = [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path", "User")
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", "$userPath;$sdk\platform-tools;$sdk\emulator", "User")
# Close and reopen Windows Terminal so the new PATH is picked up.

Used the standalone zip from step 1 with no Android Studio? Add ~/platform-tools (Windows: $HOME\platform-tools) to PATH instead.

List the AVDs you’ve created. Copy the one you want into Your values → Virtual device (AVD) name.

emulator -list-avds

Pixel_8_API_35
Medium_Phone_API_36

Linux: check that hardware acceleration (KVM) is available with emulator -accel-check. Without it the emulator is very slow or won’t start.

Run this in its own terminal tab. It keeps running while the emulator is open.

emulator -avd Pixel_8_API_35

Useful options: -no-snapshot-load for a cold boot, -wipe-data to factory-reset the device, and -no-window to run headless on a server or in CI.

Newer option: Google now marks the standalone emulator tool as deprecated in favour of the Android CLI. If you have it installed, android emulator list and android emulator start Pixel_8_API_35 do the same thing (add --headless for no window).

In a second terminal:

adb devices -l

List of devices attached
emulator-5554          device product:sdk_gphone64_x86_64 model:sdk_gphone64_x86_64 device:emu64xa transport_id:1

If it says offline, wait for the emulator to finish booting. Each emulator uses two ports: a console port (5554) and an adb port (5555). A second emulator gets 5556/5557, and so on, so its serial is emulator-5556.

Use -s to choose the device when more than one is connected.

adb -s emulator-5554 install app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk

Performing Streamed Install
Success

# Interactive shell on the device (type `exit` to leave)
adb -s emulator-5554 shell

# Live logs (Ctrl+C to stop)
adb -s emulator-5554 logcat

# Screenshot straight to your desktop
adb -s emulator-5554 exec-out screencap -p > screen.png

# Interactive shell on the device (type `exit` to leave)
adb -s emulator-5554 shell

# Live logs (Ctrl+C to stop)
adb -s emulator-5554 logcat

# Screenshot: save on the device, then pull it to your PC
adb -s emulator-5554 shell screencap /sdcard/screen.png
adb -s emulator-5554 pull /sdcard/screen.png .

On Windows, PowerShell’s > can corrupt binary data, so the screenshot is saved on the device first and then copied with adb pull.

Run your dev server (Metro, Vite, an API…) on your desktop. Then adb reverse makes localhost:8081 inside the emulator point to the same port on your desktop.

adb -s emulator-5554 reverse tcp:8081 tcp:8081
adb -s emulator-5554 reverse --list

UsbFfs tcp:8081 tcp:8081

Reverse rules need Android 5.0+ and are lost when the emulator restarts or the adb server restarts, so run this again after either. The opposite direction also works. adb forward tcp:6100 tcp:7100 sends your desktop’s port 6100 to port 7100 on the device.