Paste text on Android Emulator Paste text on Android Emulator android android

Paste text on Android Emulator


In a terminal, type adb shell input text 'my string here. With some characters escaped like \$ that'

Note that an alternative method for including spaces in the text is to substitute %s for each space character.


With v25.3.x of the Android Emulator & x86 Google API Emulator system images API Level 19 (Android 4.4 - Kitkat) and higher, you can simply copy and paste from your desktop with your mouse or keyboard.

This feature was announced with Android Studio 2.3

Copy and Paste with the Android Emulator


I usually send the text I want to copy as an sms message through telnet and then copy the text from the sms message. Here's how:

Connect through telnet:

  • Syntax: telnet localhost <port>
  • Example: telnet localhost 5554

(5554 is the default port. The title bar of the emulator shows the port that is being used, so you can see if it's different).

Send message:

  • Syntax: sms send <senders phone number> <message>
  • Example: sms send 1231231234 This is the message you want to send

(You can just make up the senders phone number)

This works really well for links as the message is automatically converted into a hyperlink which you can click without having to copy / paste it into the browser.

Once the emulator receives the message you can copy it and paste it wherever you like.