Using adb over Wireless / Wifi

Physical cables are rapidly becoming obsolete, and they’re annoying to use for Android development and debugging.

Luckily, adb can easily be configured to work wirelessly and you can free yourself from micro-USB cables (almost) entirely.

To do this, plug a phone into a computer as you would to normally debug over adb. (This is the almost part.) Make sure your phone and computer are both connected to the same wireless network.

Open a terminal, and type:

adb tcpip 5555

This command prepares adb to communicate over tcpip on port 5555. The port number is arbitrary, but you should avoid network ports that are currently in use.

Next, open your device’s settings and find your IP address. Usually this is found in Settings -> Wireless -> Menu -> Advanced. Once you’ve found the device IP, type the following into the terminal:

adb connect <ip>

And that’s it! You’ll now be able to unplug the phone and debug via Eclipse or adb as you would normally.

To switch back to antique usb debugging, just type,

adb usb

while the device is still unplugged from USB.

Note: This might not work with all devices. YMMV.


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