Using ADB to capture the screen

Question

I'm trying to get a screenshot of the phone screen as fast as possible. Currently, I am doing:

adb shell screencap -p /sdcard/screencap.png && adb pull /sdcard/screencap.png         

However it is too slow and takes up to 3 seconds. Is there any better way to do this? I intend to use this function with an unrooted phone.

Also what are the different arguments I can use for screencap?

Thanks.

EDIT (extra information): I intend to use this method to be able to get a live feed of the screen onto my pc. The current method works however it is too slow. I can't use adb shell screenrecord because I won't be able to access the video file while it is being recorded.

Solution 1

To save to a file on Windows, OSX and Linux

adb exec-out screencap -p > screen.png

To copy to clipboard on Linux use

adb exec-out screencap -p | xclip -t image/png

Solution 2

https://stackoverflow.com/a/37191719/75579 answer stopped working for me in Android 7 somehow. So I have to do it the manual way, so I want to share it.

---

How to install

1. Put this snippet of code in your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.profile file:

   snap_screen() {
     if [ $# -eq 0 ]
     then
       name="screenshot.png"
     else
       name="$1.png"
     fi
     adb shell screencap -p /sdcard/$name
     adb pull /sdcard/$name
     adb shell rm /sdcard/$name
     curr_dir=pwd
     echo "save to `pwd`/$name"
   }
   

2. Run source ~/.bash_profile or source ~/.profile command,

---

How to use

Usage without specifying filename:

$ snap_screen
11272 KB/s (256237 bytes in 0.022s)
Saved to /Users/worker8/desktop/screenshot.png

Usage with a filename:

$ snap_screen mega_screen_capture
11272 KB/s (256237 bytes in 0.022s)
Saved to /Users/worker8/desktop/mega_screen_capture.png

Hope it helps!

** This will not work if multiple devices are plugged in

Solution 3

To start recording your device’s screen, run the following command:

adb shell screenrecord /sdcard/example.mp4

This command will start recording your device’s screen using the default settings and save the resulting video to a file at /sdcard/example.mp4 file on your device.

When you’re done recording, press Ctrl+C in the Command Prompt window to stop the screen recording. You can then find the screen recording file at the location you specified. Note that the screen recording is saved to your device’s internal storage, not to your computer.

The default settings are to use your device’s standard screen resolution, encode the video at a bitrate of 4Mbps, and set the maximum screen recording time to 180 seconds. For more information about the command-line options you can use, run the following command:

adb shell screenrecord --help

This works without rooting the device. Hope this helps.

Solution 4

You can read the binary from stdout instead of saving the png to the sdcard and then pulling it:

adb shell screencap -p | sed 's|\r$||' > screenshot.png

This should save a little time, but not much.

source: Read binary stdout data from adb shell?

Solution 5

Using some of the knowledge from this and a couple of other posts, I found the method that worked the best for me was to:

adb shell 'stty raw; screencap -p'

I have posted a very simple Python script on GitHub that essentially mirrors the screen of a device connected over ADB:

https://github.com/baitisj/android_screen_mirror

View more solutions

Comments

[user2513924]

Thanks for that. Turns out the screenshot function is the actual device screenshot function (where it can play a sound) whereas screencap just takes a screenshot silently. It doesn't look like it's any faster but thanks anyway.

[user2513924]

I won't be able to get a live feed of the video unless the file is being recorded directly to my pc. Thanks anyway though.

[xdevs23]

You might use the stdout to transfer the file directly to the pc

[Sumit]

This works in Linux too.

[Vic Torious]

I get "The file "screen.png" could not be opened." when I try to open it.

[Alex P.]

no need to use stty. use adb exec-out instead. see stackoverflow.com/a/31401447/1778421

[baitisj]

Unfortunately, the version of adb that I have either does not properly support exec-out, or the option isn't properly supported under FreeBSD. The script that I posted does include comments indicating that exec-out is a better choice if it is supported in your environment.

[cjones26]

Thanks Jared--unfortunately Diego's answer did not work for me, but yours did.

[M. A.]

What about Windows OS?

[Dhiraj Gupta]

I get an error: "sed: RE error: illegal byte sequence" when I try this.

[Vineesh TP]

It says an error WorkingDirectoty: null Environment: null

[Karu]

This just moves a file around... doesn't actually take a screenshot?

[Karu]

This always worked for me, but I just had to change this to sed 's|\r\r$||' (to remove TWO carriage returns) because I started getting corrupt PNGs. Not sure what changed (New version of ADB? New version of cygwin?) but something did.

[I'm a frog dragon]

@Karu oh no, you're so right, I somehow left out the important line, I just fixed it!

[Joshua Pinter]

Wonderful. Thanks.

[Joshua Pinter]

Btw, because I use this frequently for sharing with designers and for product tutorials, I created a bash alias in my ~/.bash_profile that looks like this: alias adb_screenshot="adb -d shell screencap -p | perl -pe 's/\x0D\x0A/\x0A/g' > $(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S").png". You call it with adb_screenshot in the terminal and it will save a .png file with the current timestamp as the filename. The -d option in the adb command means it will default to physical device (not the emulator). You can remove that if you are using this for an emulator.

[DEEPANKUR SADANA]

thanks @dragonwhospitsfire !

[ramon]

For macOS: adb exec-out screencap -p > test.png

[khateeb]

I am getting PNG file corrupted by ASCII conversion when opening the PNG file.

[Ninja]

For macOS 10.13.1 .adb exec-out screencap -p > screen.png got error. And @JoshuaPinter works!

[webo80]

it works on Windows 10

[muratoner]

Awesome, this method very fast than adb push and adb pull methods.

[Stéphane Gourichon]

This is very nice, yet overwrites the same file again and again. This variant writes several files with names arranged to be in correct order whatever (sane) program you use to browse them: adb exec-out screencap -p > android_screenshot_"$( date +%Yy%mm%dd_%Hh%Mm%Ss )".png

[nevelis]

@JoshuaPinter Your alias would be better as alias adb_screenshot="adb -d exec-out screencap -p > $(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S").png" - that regex can corrupt the file if there is a valid 0x0D 0x0A sequence in the png data.

[Joshua Pinter]

@nevelis You're right! Just tried my command and it resulted in a corrupt file but yours worked perfectly. Thanks! You should add it as an answer so people can find it. It's great.

[Velda]

Any reason it should not work on the other platform, than mentioned ones? It works, naturally, on Windows.

[Display Name]

this doesn't work. results in invalid file.

[Sudhir Singh Khanger]

What is the difference between exec-out screencap -p and shell screencap -p?

[d.j.sheldrick]

For macOS copy-to-clipboard you can this tool that wraps adb npx android-capture image --copy

[Joshua Pinter]

Figured I'd post an update here since my last post was well liked but is now outdated. Here is what we're using now, which takes a screenshot of all the devices attached (very useful for those working with multiple devices) and saves the screenshots with the serial number of each device and current timestamp. Enjoy. adb devices -l | cut -d' ' -f1 | xargs -n1 -I{} sh -c "adb -s {} exec-out screencap -p > {}_$(date +'%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S').png"

[Lachlan Arthur]

For Windows users: Run the command in CMD, not PowerShell (or run cmd in PowerShell). PowerShell is corrupting the binary data when creating the file (it is interpreting the piped PNG image data as text).

[golimar]

Is this exclusively from adb? I tried from the actual phone (on 2 different devices) with a terminal app with $ screencap test.png and it generates a 0 byte file. The folder is writable, for example echo hello > test.txt does create a 6 byte file