Fire a pinch in/out command to Android phone using adb

Question

So far I'm able to tap, swipe, unlock, install/uninstall and launch app using adb commands but not able to find how to perform zoom in/out using adb command.

I have got coordinates of pinch in/out but not understanding how to fire them using adb command from terminal.

For example , we have command --> adb shell input tap x y So in this we can replace x and y with values/coordinates similarly I want to know the way to simulate pinch in/out.

Coordinates that I get for pinch-in are below.

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Answer 1

Hey after a decade there is still no viable open solution to this question. The problem is that the preexisiting "input" binary does not really make use of multi-touch, so you'd have to rely on some 3rd party binary to do the job.

The previously mentioned approach to capture the motion events and send them back directly via sendevent is unfortunately too slow to be of any use. So based on the source of that binary (https://github.com/joneschrisg/android-system-core/blob/master/toolbox/sendevent.c), I just hacked myself my own executable that replicates what a pinch event would look like on the device. https://github.com/Snaggly/Android-Pinch-Injector I tried going for the simplest solution as possible, you'd simply have to only push the binary, give it the right to execute and launch it.

Example:

./pinch 20 30 0 200

This command will inject a pinch gesture starting from 20% to the 30% position of your screen with a pinch angle of 0° from the x-axis in a span of 200 milliseconds.

The only downside is that you'd need be to root to have the write access to your /dev/input/eventX.

Answer 2

A (kind of hacky) solution with adb shell input looks like

adb shell input tap 200 200 & PIDTAP=$!
sleep 0.1
adb shell input swipe 200 200 200 100 1000 & PIDSWIPE=$!
wait $PIDTAP
wait $PIDSWIPE

The idea is that we launch TAP command, then short sleep and then perform SWIPE. Such commands sequence is interpreted as tap + swipe hence zoom is performed. The example above would be a zoom out on a map.

Answer 3

You can do it using adb getevent and sendevent.
Connect you device using adb. Follow the steps below.

1. Identify your Input device:
   Open any image on your device. To list input devices, run

   $ adb shell getevent   
   add device 1: /dev/input/event7   
   name:     "msm8226-tapan9302-snd-card Headset Jack"
   add device 2: /dev/input/event6
     name:     "msm8226-tapan9302-snd-card Button Jack"
   add device 3: /dev/input/event2
     name:     "synaptics_dsx_i2c"
   add device 4: /dev/input/event4
     name:     "qpnp_pon"
   

   Pinch in/out on the image, you should see some continuous logs like

   /dev/input/event2: 0003 0030 00000005
   /dev/input/event2: 0000 0000 00000000
   /dev/input/event2: 0003 002f 00000000
   /dev/input/event2: 0003 0036 00000144
   /dev/input/event2: 0003 003a 00000079
   /dev/input/event2: 0000 0000 00000000
   /dev/input/event2: 0003 0036 00000142
   

   Confirms /dev/input/event2 is the input device name for my target device.

2. Get exact getevent and convert getevent to sendevent:

   Make sure your screen switched on and is open with some image,
   Run the below command on the prompt.

   $ adb shell getevent | grep dev/input/event2 > getevent_input.txt
   

   While the above is running, Pinch in/out on the image on your phone.

   Once completed, Kill the above command Ctrl + C
   Open file getevent_input.txt and delete first line "add device X: /dev/input/eventX" from it.

   Since getevent returns values in decimal, and sendevent takes value in hexadecimal.
   We have to do the above conversion.
   This script hex_to_dec.py here does the Job. Thanks to this guy!

   $./hex_to_dec.py  getevent_input.txt 
   

   Generates a file getevent_input.scr, Now rename this file to .sh

   $ mv getevent_input.scr  sendevent_input.sh
   

   Open file sendevent_input.sh and delete second line "echoing – drawing function" and save it.

3. Run on device.
   Transfer sendevent_input.sh to device.

   $ adb push sendevent_input.sh /sdcard/
   1615 KB/s (64379 bytes in 0.038s)
   

   Make sure you device has an image open, and screen is not off.

   $ adb shell sh /sdcard/sendevent_input.sh
   

Worked perfectly fine for me, If this what you looking for.
For visible results, enable Show touches in Developer Options.

Environment: Motorola Moto G (Android 4.4.4) with ADB (v 1.0.31) on Ubuntu 12.04.