What is adb? Android Debug Bridge (adb) is a development tool that facilitates communication between an Android device and another supporting device. ADB is a small tool bundled in the Android SDK as part of the “Platform Tools."

Any reference to android in this post refers to any device running android or android based OS including Fire OS, Windows Subsystem for android etc.

The following steps have to be followed in order to send adb commands from terminal on linux to a target android device.

    1. Download the SDK Platform Tools for Linux.
    2. Extract the downloaded ZIP file in any folder of your choice. 
    3. Open the unzipped platform-tools folder in your file explorer of choice (Nautilus, thunar etc) and right click and select the terminal option. A terminal window should open up,
      or,
      Otherwise open a new terminal window and execute the command cd /path/to/extracted/folder/
      This will change the directory to where you extracted the downloaded file enabling you to execute adb commands if you choose to.
      So for example: cd /home/user01/Downloads/platform-tools/
    4. Ensure that either "USB Debugging" or "Wireless Debugging" option is enabled on your android device.
    5. In the terminal window, you can execute the following command to launch the ADB daemon: ./adb devices
    6. The first time you connect, on your android device, you’ll see a prompt asking you to allow ADB debugging. Go ahead and grant it.
    7. Finally, re-enter the command from step #6. If everything was successful, you should now see your device’s serial number in the Terminal.
    8. Type ./adb shell in the terminal window to enter an adb shell session if you opt to run commands from within an adb shell.
    9. In order to exit to exit the adb shell session just type exit. 
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