top

read-only

A one-shot process table: CPU share, memory, state and command line.

Command: adb shell top
Commands: System and logs
Risk: read-only

Syntax

top -b -n 1 [-m <rows>] [-H] [-q]

Flags and arguments

Token	Meaning
-b	Batch mode: plain lines instead of cursor escapes.
-n 1	One iteration, then exit. Without it the command never returns.
-m <rows>	Cap the number of process rows, which is what keeps the transfer small.
-H	Threads instead of processes.
-q	Suppress the header. Never useful here — the header is the schema.

Examples

```
top -b -n 1 -m 10
```
The ten busiest processes, once.
```
top -b -n 1
```
Every process. Hundreds of rows on a modern phone.
```
top -b -n 1 -H -m 20
```
Per-thread, for an app that is busy in one place.

Reading the output

Sample output

Tasks: 1003 total,   1 running, 1002 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
  PID USER         PR  NI VIRT  RES  SHR S[%CPU] %MEM   TIME+ ARGS
 3062 u0_a234      20   0 14.2G 353M 210M S  6.2   3.0  12:04.51 com.example

Summary lines, a header, then one row per process. Read the columns through that header: the sorted column is wrapped in brackets — `S[%CPU] %MEM` is two columns, not one — and a parser that matches labels exactly without stripping the brackets loses the very column the table is sorted on.

Output fields

Field	Meaning
PID / USER	Process id and the Android uid name (`u0_a234` is an app).
%CPU	Share over the sample window, one decimal place.
RES / VIRT / SHR	Resident, virtual and shared memory as human-readable byte values, rounded to three digits.
RSS	Resident memory in KiB assuming a 4 KiB page — which is toybox's own assumption, so it under-reports on a 16 KiB-page device.
S	Process state: S sleeping, R running, D uninterruptible, Z zombie.
TIME+	Total CPU time as minutes:seconds.hundredths — and those are total minutes, so two hours of CPU prints as 120:00.00.
ARGS	The command line, spaces included. Always the last column.

Version and vendor notes

Android's `top` is toybox, not procps, and the flags and columns differ from the GNU manual pages. The default column set comes from the code rather than from the help text.
`-n 1` still takes about a quarter of a second, because a CPU percentage needs two samples. The number you get is a real short measurement, not an average since boot.
Do not derive memory totals from the summary lines: they restate kernel counters in a lossy rounded form. `/proc/meminfo` is the better source.

We have a UI for this

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

Open Android System Monitor

Related commands

Commands that turn up in the same session as top.

Command	What it does
dumpsys meminfo	Which processes are using the most memory, measured as proportional set size.
am force-stop	Kills every process and service belonging to one app.
dumpsys activity activities	Which app is in the foreground, and the task and stack structure behind it.

More System and logs commands

Command	What it does
getprop	Prints the system properties — the phone's own answer to what it is.
logcat	Streams the system log: the running commentary of everything happening on the phone.
run-as	Runs a command as one app's own uid — the way to read a debug build's private files without root.

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.