Full control of your Android device directly from your IDE — no terminal needed.

Spock ADB puts the most common ADB workflows into a single tool window: navigate to the active Activity or Fragment in your editor, manage app lifecycle, stream logcat, run ADB commands, and inspect the UI of Views and Jetpack Compose screens.

It also ships an Android MCP server: give Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor or any MCP client safe, structured access to a connected device. 42 strongly typed tools rather than a raw shell, and anything destructive asks you first, every time.

Works in Android Studio and IntelliJ IDEA.

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Why

Everything here is one keystroke or one click away from where you already are. No switching to a terminal, no remembering adb shell dumpsys activity activities | grep …, and no guessing which of three attached devices a command just hit — every operation names its target.

New in 4.0

• Works in IntelliJ IDEA, not just Android Studio
• Logcat and an ADB Command Center in the tool window
• UI Inspector for Views and Jetpack Compose
• Android MCP server — safe, structured device access for AI agents
• Every operation is an IntelliJ Action, bindable in Keymap

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The tool window

Devices

Model, Android version, API level, architecture, and whether each device is an emulator or a handset — with offline and unauthorized devices labelled as such. Your selection persists between sessions, and every other tab targets it.

Open Current Activity	Jump to the Activity on screen, in your editor
Open Current Fragment	Jump to the visible Fragment, nested ones included
Back stacks	The app's Activity/Fragment stack, or the system-wide one
Restart / Force Stop / Test Process Death	App lifecycle, one click each
Clear Data · Uninstall	Destructive — always confirmed, and the prompt names the device
Permissions	Toggle runtime permissions individually, or grant/revoke all
Developer options	Show Taps, Layout Bounds, Don't Keep Activities, animation scales
Network	Toggle Wi-Fi and mobile data
Input text · Open deep link	Type on the device, or fire an ACTION_VIEW intent

Logcat

Scoped to the app in your project by default — this is the part Android Studio's Logcat window doesn't do for you.

• Presets for Current app, Errors only, Crashes, ANRs, Network
• Filters by process ID, not by text-matching the package name — text matching both misses lines and returns unrelated ones
• Level, tag, plain-text and regex search. An invalid regex matches nothing and says so, rather than silently showing an unfiltered log
• Crashes and ANRs are colour-coded; pause, clear, copy, export, auto-scroll

Commands

Any adb shell command, with the things a terminal gives you and a tool window usually doesn't: a real timeout, a Cancel button that actually stops the command, de-duplicating history, favourites, and searchable output.

Destructive commands are flagged as you type, not only in a dialog after you press Run.

UI Inspector

Inspect what is on screen — and it works for Jetpack Compose, because it reads the accessibility tree where Compose publishes its semantics rather than assuming a View hierarchy.

• Says outright whether the screen is Views, Jetpack Compose, or hybrid
• Browse and search the semantics tree; filter to interactive elements
• Per-node test tag, text, content description, bounds and every interactive flag
• Accessibility audit — unlabelled controls, sub-48dp touch targets, duplicate labels — each with a fix appropriate to the framework (Modifier.semantics on Compose, not android:contentDescription)

The screenshot above is a real Compose app: the panel reports the framework, and because the app hasn't opted into testTagsAsResourceId it says so and gives the fix, instead of showing an empty column and leaving you to work out why.

MCP Server

Give an AI agent — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor — safe, structured access to a connected device. Off by default; you start it deliberately.

• 42 strongly typed tools instead of a raw shell, so an agent can reason about what an operation means and you can audit it
• Live activity monitor: every call with a safety marker, outcome and duration. Expand one to see arguments, result, client, target device — and whether you approved or denied it
• Tools catalogue grouped by safety, browsable before you start the server
• Searchable, bounded request history
• HTTP and stdio, served by one protocol implementation and one tool registry. The stdio configuration carries no token at all, so it is safe to paste anywhere

Destructive tools always ask, per call, and default to denied. An unattended IDE denies rather than approves.

✓ Read-only	Device info, packages, logcat, screenshots, UI tree — run automatically
⚡ Actions	Launch, tap, input text, deep links — run automatically
⚠ Destructive	Clear data, uninstall, revoke permission, arbitrary shell — always confirmed

See docs/MCP.md for setup, the full tool list, the safety model and example agent workflows.

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Keyboard shortcuts

Every operation is an IntelliJ Action, so it shows up in Find Action and in Settings → Keymap → Spock ADB.

No default shortcuts ship. A binding that's free in one keymap is taken in another, and a plugin silently claiming a combination you already use is worse than shipping none — so you assign your own. Settings → Tools → Spock ADB shows what's currently bound.

Actions are context-aware: they disable themselves and say why, for example "Restart App — no Android device connected".

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Supported IDEs

IDE	Versions
Android Studio	2023.1 (Hedgehog) and later
IntelliJ IDEA	2023.1 and later, with the bundled Android plugin

Every release is checked against five IDE builds with JetBrains Plugin Verifier before it ships. See docs/COMPATIBILITY.md for the matrix and the reasoning.

Restart App With Debugger needs the Android Studio execution tooling. It's available in all supported Android Studio versions and IntelliJ IDEA 2025.1+, and hides itself where it isn't. Everything else works everywhere.

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Installation

JetBrains Marketplace: Spock ADB

Or from your IDE: Settings → Plugins → Marketplace → search "Spock ADB"

Quick start

1. Open an Android project and connect a device or start an emulator.
2. Open the Spock ADB tool window (left-hand sidebar, or Tools → SpockAdb).
3. Pick your device in Devices — every other tab follows it.
4. Optional: Tools → SpockAdb → Start MCP Server for AI Agents, then Copy MCP Client Configuration (stdio) — or (HTTP) — and paste it into your MCP client.

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Troubleshooting

The device list is empty. Check adb devices sees it. The list refreshes whenever the tool window becomes visible, so switching away and back re-reads it. If a device is attached but not listed, Help → Show Log in Finder/Explorer will have the ADB error — failures are logged.

A device shows as unauthorized. Accept the USB debugging prompt on the device. Actions ignore devices that aren't ready and tell you which ones and why.

"Could not determine the application ID." The plugin reads it from the Android module in the open project — open an Android project and let Gradle sync finish.

Restart App With Debugger is missing. Your IDE doesn't ship the Android Studio execution tooling; the action hides itself rather than failing. Everything else still works.

UI Inspector says it can't dump the UI. uiautomator can't capture while the screen is off, a secure window (payment, password) is showing, or the UI is mid-animation.

Compose test tags aren't shown. The app has to opt in with Modifier.semantics { testTagsAsResourceId = true }. Until then, match on text or content description — the panel says so too.

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Documentation

Document	Contents
docs/MCP.md	MCP server: setup, tools, safety model, Compose support, agent workflows
docs/COMPATIBILITY.md	Supported IDE range, verification matrix, how to change it safely
CONTRIBUTING.md	Development setup, threading rules, release process
CHANGELOG.md	Release history

Development

./gradlew runIde         # launch a sandboxed IDE with the plugin
./gradlew test           # unit tests
./gradlew detekt         # static analysis
./gradlew verifyPlugin   # Plugin Verifier across all supported IDEs
./gradlew buildPlugin    # produce the installable zip

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Demo

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License

Copyright 2019 Ahmed Wahdan

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.