Because this should be really easy, but it’s a real PAIN, here are steps you have to go through to use your own device to debug your app. Useless to say that as the emulator is crap very slow, this is really necessary to develop in good conditions.
This is for windows, but some steps are the same for each OS.
Get you device into developer mode
Go to parameters, about the phone/tablet/whatever, tap several times on Build number. This will activate the developer mode.
Activate USB Debug mode
Now in your device parameters, you have a developer menu at the bottom. Go there and simply activate the USB debug mode.
Install drivers on your computer
Download the ADB USB drivers from Google page. Extract it somewhere safe.
Plug your device on your computer. On your computer, go to the device manager. Right click on your device which should have a yellow icon on it. Install the driver from a location. Select the ADB USB driver location. All should install fine.
Verify your environment variables
You need to have the ANDROID_SDK_HOME variable on your computer in order to make this work.
This variable value should point on C:\Users\LouWii\.android. Of course, replace LouWii by your windows account.
Make your PC to detect the device
Open up cmd.exe. Go to your Android SDK folder. I don’t remember the default path; I installed mine separately. Here are the command I needed to enter : (the first two are to go inside my Android SDK folder)
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1 |
F: |
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cd "Documents\Android SDK\platform-tools" |
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adb kill-server |
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adb devices |
This made a popup appeared on my phone to accept the debug apps from the computer.
If not, try to change the USB mode of your device : go to parameters, stockage and tap on the three dots on the top right on your screen. Change from MTP to PTP.
You’re done
That’s the steps I made to get this work. This is a real pain compared to iOS dev, but whatever…
