adbcat

Securely bridge ADB clients & servers across networks

Why?

Have you ever been working with a remote developer or QA engineer, and needed to access their locally-connected ADB devices? adbcat is a cross-platform command-line tool that allows you to do just that. adbcat works across the internet and requires basically zero setup.

Basics

From the machine where you have adb devices connected, start sharing with adbcat:

$ adbcat

You'll see output something like:

$ adbcat
Starting adbcat v0.1
Running in server mode
Connected to gateway at adbcat.frazieje.com
adbcat sharing local adb server at 91a8544851cadb10869f61b069bd409a

Then from a remote machine where you want to access the devices, start a client and provide the sharing key:

$ adbcat 91a8544851cadb10869f61b069bd409a

You'll see output something like:

$ adbcat 91a8544851cadb10869f61b069bd409a
Starting adbcat v0.1
Running in client mode
Connected to gateway at adbcat.frazieje.com
adbcat sharing local adb commands to 91a8544851cadb10869f61b069bd409a

Now you can execute adb commands on the remote machine:

$ adb devices
List of devices attached
9A251F38298E9	device

How does it work?

adbcat works by relaying data between the sharing (server) machine and the remote (client) machine through an adbcat gateway. The adbcat gateway manages connections from clients and servers and forwards data between them as necessary.

You can start an adbcat gateway on your own server with:

$ adbcat gateway

You'll see output something like:

$ adbcat gateway
Starting adbcat v0.1
Running in gateway mode

The adbcat gateway

By default, adb clients and servers try to access a gateway at adbcat.frazieje.com, but if you want to use your own gateway server, just make sure it's available online and use the -h option when starting the client and server pieces. For example: On your gateway machine, let's say it's hosted at adbcat.example.com:

$ adbcat gateway

On your sharing (server) machine:

$ adbcat -h adbcat.example.com
Starting adbcat v0.1
Running in server mode
Connected to gateway at adbcat.example.com
adbcat sharing local adb server at 91a8544851cadb10869f61b069bd409a

And on your client machine:

$ adbcat -h adbcat.example.com 91a8544851cadb10869f61b069bd409a
Starting adbcat v0.1
Running in client mode
Connected to gateway at adbcat.example.com
adbcat sharing local adb commands to 91a8544851cadb10869f61b069bd409a