Injecting Input and State — Drive the Device From the Shell

This skill covers the on-device shell surface a test/QA engineer drives over adb to simulate user gestures, override the screen configuration, flip system settings, reset app state, and launch Activities. Transport (adb devices, USB/TCP) lives in ../../architecture/understanding-adb-architecture/SKILL.md; capturing artefacts after driving the device lives in ../../capture/capturing-screenshots-and-screenrecord/SKILL.md.

When to use this skill

• The developer needs to script a user journey from CI without writing instrumentation: tap, swipe, type text, press hardware keys.
• A bug repro requires a specific screen size or density (wm size 411x731, wm density 320) without recreating an emulator AVD.
• The test suite is flaky because animations are on; the developer wants the canonical hermetic preamble (window_animation_scale = 0 etc.).
• The developer needs to clear app data between runs and is unsure whether am force-stop is enough (it is not).
• A script uses adb shell svc wifi disable and silently does nothing on API 30+ — the modern cmd wifi set-wifi-enabled disabled is the fix.
• The developer needs to launch a deep-link Activity with typed extras (--ez, --ei, --es).

When NOT to use this skill

• The bytes need to leave the device (screenshots, logs, DB). Use ../../capture/capturing-screenshots-and-screenrecord/SKILL.md, ../../observability/extracting-logs-with-logcat/SKILL.md, ../../transfer/extracting-test-artifacts/SKILL.md.
• Driving the device from inside an instrumentation test, not from the host. Use ../../../instrumentation/scenarios/launching-activities-with-activityscenario/SKILL.md or UiAutomator.
• Installing or uninstalling APKs. Use ../../apps/installing-and-managing-apps/SKILL.md.
• Connecting to the device in the first place. Use ../../devices/connecting-to-devices/SKILL.md or ../../devices/connecting-over-wifi/SKILL.md.