screencap

read-only

Takes a screenshot, either to a file on the phone or to standard output as PNG.

Command: adb shell screencap
Commands: Display and capture
Risk: read-only

Syntax

screencap [-p] [<device path>]

Flags and arguments

Token	Meaning
-p	Encode as PNG. Without it and without a path ending in .png the output is a raw framebuffer dump.
<path>	Write to a file on the device instead of to standard output.

Examples

```
screencap -p /sdcard/shot.png
```
Write to the phone, then pull the file. Always safe.
```
screencap -p
```
PNG bytes on standard output. From a desktop, run it through `adb exec-out`, never `adb shell`.

Reading the output

Binary PNG data, or nothing at all when you gave it a path. There is no success message: the evidence is the file, or the bytes.

Output fields

Field	Meaning
(PNG bytes)	The image, on standard output, when no path was given.
(no output)	The image went to the file you named.

Version and vendor notes

Streaming the bytes needs `adb exec-out screencap -p`, not `adb shell`. The plain shell service gives the command a terminal, and a terminal turns every 0x0A byte into 0x0D 0x0A — which corrupts a PNG in a way that is invisible until something tries to decode it.
Content protected by DRM comes out black. The compositor refuses to hand those buffers over, so this is a property of the platform rather than a bug in the capture.
For a screenshot without your own notification icons in it, put SystemUI into demo mode first with `am broadcast`.

We have a UI for this

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

Open Android ADB Toolbox

Related commands

Commands that turn up in the same session as screencap.

Command	What it does
screenrecord	Records the screen to an MP4 file on the device.
am broadcast	Sends a broadcast intent, which is how SystemUI demo mode and other platform receivers are driven from a shell.
wm size	Reports the display's resolution, or overrides it so the phone pretends to be a different screen.

More Display and capture commands

Command	What it does
wm density	Reports the display density, or overrides it — which is what actually moves a layout breakpoint.

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.

Frequently asked questions

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 <command>` 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.

Would rather click than type? The Web ADB Toolkit runs commands like this from a browser over USB. Or browse every command.