Wireless ADB without root

Losing a USB cable while using Android Debug Bridge  for debugging an app or device has two obvious advantages:

• using device micro USB port for other activities like charging via AC adapter (helpful during extreme tests)
• reducing amount of clutter on your desk

So let’s do it. Here is the list of the ingredients:

• device IP address
• few minutes of spare time

1. First, let obtain the IP address from the device

There are two ways of doing it via Settings and ADB.

via Settings method:

Open Settings -> Wi-Fi -> Select network connected to or open Advanced

via ADB method:

Once ensured that USB debugging is on, type the following in command prompt:

$ adb shell netcfg
lo UP 127.0.0.1/8 0x00000049 00:00:00:00:00:00
sit0 DOWN 0.0.0.0/0 0x00000080 00:00:00:00:00:00
ip6tnl0 DOWN 0.0.0.0/0 0x00000080 00:00:00:00:00:00
wlan0 UP 192.168.0.14/24 0x00001043 cc:d2:9b:7b:54:db
p2p0 UP 0.0.0.0/0 0x00001003 ce:d2:9b:7b:54:db

wlan0 is the configuration we are looking for and it provides with IP address.

In both cases, you will have your IP address displayed (in our case: 192.168.0.14). Make a note of it as it will be required to make accessing ADB via Wi-Fi possible.

2. Engaging wireless connection:

Execute while the device is connected to PC via USB cable and USB debugging is on.

Switch ADB to TCP mode:

$ adb tcpip 5555

Then connect the device:

$ adb connect <device IP address>

Verify the connection is established:

$ adb devices
List of devices attached
192.168.0.14:5555 device

Now you can dump USB cable as its no longer required.

There is one major disadvantage of this solution – after device restart, it will revert back to USB mode, therefore wireless connection has to be established again.

Hope this help with debugging.