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Install, launch and read an app on the emulated Android

Install an APK, launch the app by package, adjust permissions and read the screen and the logs of the emulated Android.

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This is the Android path: putting an APK on the emulated device, opening the app, changing runtime permissions and reading what is happening — the accessibility tree and logcat. These are the steps that replace “installing through Android Studio” and “looking at the screen” when the device is inside Elyra.

Prerequisites

  • An emulated Android device active for the workspace. See Mobile emulator.
  • The APK already built on disk, if you are going to install it.
  • The app’s package — and the activity, if it is not the default one.

Steps

  1. Install the APK. Point at the file path and the target:

    Janela do terminal
    elyra emulator install ./app-debug.apk --device emulator-5554 --json

    Use --reinstall to replace an existing install of the same package:

    Janela do terminal
    elyra emulator install ./app-debug.apk --reinstall --json

  2. Launch the app by package, with the activity when it matters:

    Janela do terminal
    elyra emulator launch com.acme.app --activity .MainActivity --json

  3. Grant or revoke a runtime permission. The order is grant|revoke, then the package, then the permission:

    Janela do terminal
    elyra emulator permissions grant com.acme.app android.permission.CAMERA --json
    elyra emulator permissions revoke com.acme.app android.permission.CAMERA --json

  4. Reset every runtime grant at once, when you want a clean state. reset takes neither a package nor a permission:

    Janela do terminal
    elyra emulator permissions reset --json

  5. Read the screen through the accessibility tree. ax dumps the uiautomator tree, which is how you know what is visible without a screenshot:

    Janela do terminal
    elyra emulator ax --device emulator-5554 --json

  6. Capture a log excerpt. logcat makes a one-shot dump, with a line limit and per-tag filters:

    Janela do terminal
    elyra emulator logcat --lines 200 --device emulator-5554 --json
    elyra emulator logcat --filters "MyTag:D" --filters "*:S" --lines 200 --json

    Each filter is TAG:PRIORITY, with priority among V D I W E F S and * as the wildcard tag.

Result

  • The APK stays installed on the emulated device and the app opens by package and activity.
  • The state of runtime permissions is under your control through the commands, without going through the Android UI.
  • The accessibility tree and the log lines say what the app published and recorded.

Limits

  • These commands are Android-only. On an iOS Simulator they are refused with emulator_unsupported. On iOS, install and launch are up to Apple’s tooling, outside Elyra.
  • An untrusted APK changes the device. Installing is running third-party code on the device: install only what you built or trust, and prefer a throwaway AVD for it.
  • reset removes every runtime grant you gave — not only the last one. It is the way back to the initial state and also the way to break an app that depended on them.
  • The accessibility tree and the logs can contain personal data or tokens. Redact before sharing: nothing here was written to become a public attachment.
  • Read the result field, not just the absence of an error. install answers installed, launch answers launched and permissions answers applied; the false variant carries the reason.
  • The permissions order is the common trap: swapping package and permission is refused, and the refusal does not say which of the two is out of place.
  • There is no verb to uninstall an app in this family. exec is a raw passthrough, runs in the device shell and returns only stdout — and it can change the simulator’s state.
  • There is no screenshot and no copying of files off the device here.

Recovery and safe cleanup

  • The install failed — re-read the reason in the reply; confirm the APK path exists on the execution host and that the target is an Android device.
  • The app did not open — check the package and the activity; without --activity, the package must resolve the default activity.
  • The permission was refused — confirm the grant|revoke order, the package and the full permission name (android.permission.<NAME>).
  • Undoing a grant — permissions revoke for a specific permission; permissions reset for all of them.
  • Stopping the helper — elyra emulator kill to free the session leaving the device on, or elyra emulator shutdown to stop it and power the device off. See Emulator commands.

Next steps