If you're trying to customize and control your devices, Android offers a lot of flexibility. One of the ways to control your devices and perform some privileged tasks is by using the Bugjaeger app.

In this post I would like to show you how to start and kill apps remotely. This can be useful especially when you try to control your Android TV device or set-top box or just for experimentation or out of curiosity.

First I'll show how to establish a remote wireless connection. Then I'll explain how to start apps and stop the running apps afterwards.

I also wrote some other posts about controlling Android devices with Bugjaeger. If you want to have some more information, I suggest to check out these other posts other posts as well.

Connect to Target Remotely

Bugjaeger allows to connect to Android devices (targets) remotely, if the devices are using the same WiFi network. There might be some devices that have an ADB TCP/IP connection enabled by default (Android Things or Android TV). But on most phones and tablets, you first need to connect to target devices via USB and enable wireless TCP/IP connection manually.

To make instructions easier to follow, I'll call the devices that has Bugjaeger installed the host. The device that we want to control will be the target.

To create a remote ADB connection between host(Bugjaeger) and target, do the following

1. Enable Developer options AND USB debugging on target device. Check out the official docs, if you're not sure how to do this

2. Start Bugjaeger app on host device

3. Connect host and target through USB OTG cable

4. Switch to Commands section in Bugjaeger app (first tab)

5. Execute the Connect Through WiFi command in Bugjaeger

If you're familiar with ADB, the steps above will have the same effect as executing adb tcpip 5555. The target should now be ready to accept wireless ADB connection via TCP/IP on port 5555.

To connect to the target, open the connect dialog by tapping the connect button.

Then type in the target IP address, and tap on the Connect

You can find target's IP address in advanced WiFi settings (in target's Android settings), or directly via Bugjaeger by executing the command Get WiFi IP address.

Starting Apps Remotely

Bugjaeger gives you multiple options how to start apps.

The first option how to start an app is trough the Packages tab. In Bugjaeger go to the Packages tab, then find the package name and tap on the run button next to the package name. You can use my Power APK app to find what package name a particular app is using.

Another more "low-level" option is to directly launch an app through a shell script. This is what the previous method is doing under the hood.

For this you should go to the Commands tab and either create a new custom command or start the interactive shell

You can use the following shell command

monkey -p app.package.name -c android.intent.category.LAUNCHER 1

Killing Apps Remotely

You again have multiple options how to accomplish this with Bugjaeger.

The easiest option would be to switch to Processes section and tap the cross next to the package name of the app you'll like to stop.

The other way to kill apps is again through the Commands. Here you can again create a custom command or execute command through interactive shell same way as in the previous section.

You can use this shell command

am force-stop app.package.name

Conclusion

Bugjaeger can be a powerful tool in your Android app arsenal, if you learn how to use it . It offers functionality from 2 well known development, debugging, and flashing tools - ADB and Fastboot.

One of the things that it can do is controlling Android devices remotely when they're connected to the same WiFi network. Download Bugjaeger from the following link

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.sisik.hackendebug

If you're not sure how to get the package name for an app, I also recommend to check out my Power APK app

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.sisik.apktools

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