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Abhishek Keshri
Abhishek Keshri

Posted on • Originally published at 2kabhishek.blogspot.com on

Control your Android device from PC πŸ“±πŸ’»

scrcpy running on Linux

Wouldn't it be convenient if you could mirror your Android device's screen onto your PC and interact with it? I have just the right tool for this job that lets you do all this and more and it's called "scrcpy". It is a tool created by folks at Genymotion.

What you'll need:

Android device with Lollipop (API 21 / Android 5.0) or newer with USB debugging turned on.

adb - Android debugging bridge.

scrcpy itself.

Installation instructions:

Windows:

You can get the pre built release which includes both adb and scrcpy from here.

Linux:

Install the packages android-tools and scrcpy using your distro's package manager, there's also a snap package.

(Debian)

sudo apt install android-tools scrcpy

(Arch)

sudo pacman -S android-tools scrcpy

macOS:

brew cask install android-platform-tools

brew install scrcpy

USB Debugging:

You can enable USB debugging in the device system settings, under Developer options.

Go to Settings > About phone and tap Build number seven times. Return to the previous screen to find Developer options at the bottom.In developer options turn on Android debugging.

On some devices, the Developer options screen might be located or named differently.

Connecting:

Now you can connect your device to your PC using a USB cable or Wifi and run scrcpy from a terminal (bash / cmd / Powershell).

To connect wirelessly your devices have to be on the same local network. Open a teminal and type

adb tcpip 5555

adb connect DEVICE-IP:5555

Replace DEVICE-IP with your android devices IP address which can be found under Settings > About > IP Address.

Now you're connected with your device and can interact with it using keyboard and mouse.

Some of the most used keyboard shortcuts:

Ctrl + b / Right click - Back

Ctrl + h / Middle click - Home

Ctrl + s - Recent apps

Ctrl + p - Power button

Ctrl + o - Turn device screen off

Ctrl + n - Expand notifications panel

Ctrl + Shift + n - Collapse notification panel

If you are facing lag when connected wirelessly you can run scrcpy at a lower resolution using

scrcpy -m 640 # Sets max size to 640px

or at a lower bitrate using

scrcpy -b 3M # Sets bitrate to 3 MB

More options and keyboard shortcuts can be found by running scrcpy --help.

You can also visit the project's GitHub page if you want to know more.

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