How do I run an adb shell command?

Switch on developer options and USB debugging on the phone, plug it in, then run adb shell from a machine with platform-tools installed — or run adb shell on its own to get an interactive prompt and type the command without the prefix. If the command produces binary output, such as a screenshot, use adb exec-out instead of adb shell: the plain shell service attaches a terminal, which rewrites newline bytes and corrupts the data.

Do adb shell commands need root?

Not the ones on this reference. They run as the shell user, which can manage packages for its own Android user, read most dumpsys services, write the settings provider, inject input and read shared storage. Root is only needed for things this reference deliberately avoids — reading another app's private data (except through run-as on a debuggable build), writing system partitions, or reading /data/anr directly.

Why does the output look different on my phone?

Either the Android version or the manufacturer. Some flags and fields arrived in a specific release, and those are noted per command. The rest is OEM patching, which hits dumpsys hardest: a dump is debug output whose text is whatever the service author last printed, and manufacturers change it and backport their changes. Read fields by name rather than by position, and treat an unfamiliar shape as a difference rather than as a failure.

Can I run this from a browser instead of a terminal?

For many commands, yes — the Web ADB tools on this site talk to a phone over WebUSB from a Chromium-based desktop browser, with no SDK installed and nothing uploaded. Each page links to the tool that runs its command, when one exists. Two limits are worth knowing: only one program can hold the ADB interface at a time, so a desktop adb server has to be stopped first, and adb forward and adb reverse cannot work in a browser at all.

rm

destructive

Deletes a file or a directory tree on the device.

Command: adb shell rm
Commands: Files and storage
Risk: destructive

Syntax

rm [-f] [-r] <path>
rmdir <path>

Flags and arguments

Token	Meaning
-f	Do not prompt. This is about hanging, not sloppiness: the legacy shell service gives the command a terminal, so a write-protected file triggers a prompt nobody can answer.
-r	Recurse into a directory. The dangerous one.
rmdir	Remove a directory only if it is empty. Safer than `rm -rf` for a folder a scan called empty minutes ago.
-v	Print each removal as it happens, one quoted path per line. Success is otherwise entirely silent, so this is the only way to see which paths went and which were skipped without scanning the device again.
-i	Prompt before every removal — the exact opposite of `-f`, and unusable over a connection with nothing on the other end to answer with. Listed so it is recognisable when a copied command line hangs.

Examples

```
rm -f '/sdcard/Download/old installer.apk'
```
One file, single-quoted so the space stays part of the name.
```
rmdir '/sdcard/Android/data/com.gone.app'
```
An empty leftover directory, with the emptiness verified by the device.
```
rm -rf '/sdcard/Android/data/com.gone.app'
```
The same directory and everything in it. Check the package is really gone first.
```
rm -v -f '/sdcard/Download/old installer.apk'
```
The same deletion, but it prints the path it actually removed, so the result is a receipt instead of an inference.

Reading the output

Nothing on success. A refusal is printed — `Permission denied`, `Directory not empty` from `rmdir`, `No such file or directory` without `-f` — and that text is the whole message.

Output fields

Field	Meaning
(no output)	The path is gone.
rmdir: … Directory not empty	Something appeared since you last looked. Deliberately not swallowed.
Permission denied	The shell user may not write there.
rm '<path>'	The `-v` receipt for a removed file. A removed directory reports itself as `rmdir '<path>'` on the same line format.
rm ro <path>	A prompt, not a result. The command is waiting; nothing has been deleted yet and nothing will be until it gets an answer.

What access it needs

No root, no toggle, nothing to enable — and that is exactly what this page is about, because the shell's reach over shared storage is wide. `adbd` drops to the `shell` uid carrying `sdcard_rw`, `ext_data_rw` and `ext_obb_rw` in its supplementary group list, which is why a cable can delete anything under shared storage, the `Android/data` and `Android/obb` directories included — the very folders an ordinary app on the same phone has been refused since Android 11. App-private storage under `/data/data` stays out of reach without root, and the system partition is mounted read-only, so the blast radius of an unprivileged `rm` is almost exactly the user's own photos, downloads and app caches: the data with no copy anywhere else. `adb root` widens that to everything and exists only on `userdebug` and `eng` builds; there is no reason whatsoever to reach for it here. One access detail changes which command you should type. The legacy shell service hands `rm` a terminal, and toybox `rm` asks before removing a file the shell cannot write — it prints a question on stderr and then waits. Over a connection with nobody to answer, the command never returns at all. `-f` is what prevents that, which is why it appears on this page as a fix for hanging rather than as a licence to be careless.

Failure messages, decoded

Message	Meaning
rm: /sdcard/Download/old installer.apk: Permission denied	toybox names the node it was working on. For a path you gave on the command line that name is the whole path, so this line is quotable as it stands; for a file reached inside a recursive walk it is only the last component, and you are left reconstructing which directory it came from. One exact path per command is what keeps that unambiguous.
rmdir: /sdcard/Android/data/com.gone.app: Directory not empty	Something arrived in the folder between the scan and the deletion — a screenshot, a log line flushed to disk, a download that resumed. This is `rmdir` doing the job it is here for: it is the only delete command with a precondition, and the precondition is evaluated on the device at the instant of deletion rather than by whatever listed the folder minutes earlier.
rm: rm /. if you mean it	The literal argument `/` is refused with that odd sentence and the command simply moves on to its next argument. It is not a permission check, and the phrasing is not a typo on this page — it is the text in the source. Nothing was removed.
rm: bad path /sdcard/Download/..	An argument whose final component is `..` is refused outright, because a pattern like `dir/.*` expands to include it and the deletion would land on the parent instead. Nothing was removed. Treat it as a warning that the path you sent was assembled by something other than you.
rm: Needs 1 argument (see "rm --help")	No path survived to the command at all — usually an unquoted variable that expanded to nothing. Worth pausing over rather than retrying: without this check the same mistake would have been a delete command with no anchor on it.
rm ro /sdcard/protected.bin	Not an error and not the end of the output: it is a question written to stderr, and `rm` is now waiting for a yes or a no. Without `-f`, any file the shell cannot write triggers it, and over a connection with nobody at the keyboard the command hangs rather than failing — which is the failure mode most easily mistaken for a slow device.

What it changes, and the way back

Android has no trash can and no undo. A deleted photo is gone, and a `-r` aimed at the wrong directory takes everything under it. Delete one exact path per command — never a wildcard, never a directory you have not just listed — and prefer `rmdir` for something you believe is empty, because it *fails* if it is not. There is no way back from this command; the only protection is the path you type.

Version and vendor notes

Single-quote every path. Inside single quotes a space, `&`, `$`, a backtick and a semicolon are all literal bytes, and real files on a phone are called things like `Rock & Roll.mp3`. The one character single quotes cannot carry is an apostrophe.
One path per command. A batched delete reports a single exit status for many files, so a partial failure is invisible.
Deleting per-app directories under shared storage does not uninstall anything and does not free the app's own private data; it removes the copy that lives on shared storage.
The supplementary groups the shell is given — `sdcard_rw`, `ext_data_rw`, `ext_obb_rw` — are what let a cable delete `Android/data` folders that apps on the same phone cannot reach at all. That is a deliberate capability rather than an oversight, and it is the reason this page insists on one exact, already-listed path at a time.
`-v` costs nothing and converts a silent success into a receipt. Working through a list produced by the Android Storage Analyzer, it is the difference between knowing which paths went and re-scanning the device to find out.

We have a UI for this

Android Storage Analyzer runs this command over USB and parses what comes back — a Chromium browser, no SDK, nothing uploaded.

Open Android Storage Analyzer

Related commands

Commands that turn up in the same session as rm.

Command	What it does
find	Walks a directory tree and prints what matches — big files, empty folders, leftovers.
du	Reports how much disk space a directory tree occupies.
screenrecord	Records the screen to an MP4 file on the device.
pm install	Installs one APK that is already on the device, which is what `adb install` does under the hood.

More Files and storage commands

Command	What it does
df	Reports free and used space per mounted filesystem.

Checked against AOSP, toybox and kernel sources while writing the parsers behind our Web ADB tools. Where a behaviour genuinely varies by Android version or manufacturer, this page says so instead of giving a number that would be wrong on half the phones out there.