Debug Android Apps on chromebook using ADB

Background

Chromebook now supports Android Apps to be run. At Google I/O 2016, it was announced that Android apps would be available to run on supported Chromebooks via the Google Play Store, which will result in having two app stores in Chrome OS. ARC's native code approach was abandoned, instead using unmodified copy of Android's framework running in a container. Android apps run in floating windows now. You can also see google playstore in your chrome once you enable it in settings -

In this post we will see how we can run ADB and side load android apps.

 Debug Android Apps on chromebook using ADB

First make sure you your chromebook is in developer mode and and you have also enabled developer options in android settings. All of this was already shown in my last post -

•  How to enable developer mode on a Chromebook

Now from developer options turn on ADB debugging.

Now go to your shell again and execute following commands -

• sudo crossystem dev_boot_signed_only=0
• sudo /usr/libexec/debugd/helpers/dev_features_rootfs_verification
• sudo reboot

This should reboot your chromebook . This will setup set up developer features and enable disk-write access for the firewall settings changes.

 On reboot execute following command in shell -

• sudo /usr/libexec/debugd/helpers/dev_features_ssh

This will configure secure shell for you.

 And you are done. Now just note down the ip of your chromebook (you can execute ifconfig in shell to know)

and from your development machine type connect adb. Eg if your chromebook ip is 192.168.1.6 you will type -

• adb connect 192.168.1.2:22

You can type following command to verify it is connected -

• adb devices

 Now you can execute all adb commands including install to install your dev apk builds.

And you should see it get installed on your chromebook -

Related Links

• How to enable developer mode on a Chromebook (OSFG) 
• Optimizing Apps for Chromebooks