settings put

changes the device

Writes a value into the settings provider — the mechanism behind most developer-options tricks.

Command: adb shell settings put
Commands: Settings provider
Risk: changes the device

Syntax

settings put <system|secure|global> <key> <value>

Flags and arguments

Token	Meaning
system \| secure \| global	The namespace. Writing a key into the wrong one creates a key nothing reads, and it fails silently.

Examples

```
settings put global window_animation_scale 0.0
```
Turn one animation off. Developer options actually sets three scales; `transition_animation_scale` and `animator_duration_scale` are the other two.
```
settings put system show_touches 1
```
Draw a dot where the screen is touched — useful for recording a demo.
```
settings put global http_proxy 10.0.0.5:8080
```
Point the phone's HTTP stack at a proxy on your machine.
```
settings put global http_proxy :0
```
Clear the proxy. `:0` is what the platform's own settings UI writes.

Reading the output

Nothing on success. Silence is the answer, so verify with `settings get` rather than believing the absence of output — a write into the wrong namespace is just as silent as a correct one.

Output fields

Field	Meaning
(no output)	The write was accepted.
Exception / Permission Denial	The shell user may not write that key on this build.

What it changes, and the way back

There is no derivable antidote: the platform does not remember what the value was, so read it with `settings get` *before* you write and keep that number. The proxy key is the one that bites hardest — a phone that leaves the building with `global http_proxy` set has no working internet on any network and nothing on the phone explains why. Clear it with `settings put global http_proxy :0`, not with an empty string.

Version and vendor notes

Restoring means writing the old value back, which means having read it first. The command has no undo of its own.
Clearing the proxy with an empty string does not work reliably: several builds store the two quote characters literally and leave the phone pointed at nothing useful. `:0` is the value to write.
"Animations off" is three keys, not one. Setting only the window scale leaves transitions and animators running.

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 settings put.

Command	What it does
settings get	Reads one value out of the phone's settings provider.
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.

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.