Stopping an Android app from console

Question

Is it possible to stop an Android app from the console? Something like:

adb stop com.my.app.package

It would speed up our testing process s

Answer 1

If you target a non-rooted device and/or have services in you APK that you don't want to stop as well, the other solutions won't work.

To solve this problem, I've resorted to a broadcast message receiver I've added to my activity in order to stop it.

public class TestActivity extends Activity {
    private static final String STOP_COMMAND = "com.example.TestActivity.STOP";

    private BroadcastReceiver broadcastReceiver = new BroadcastReceiver() {
        @Override
        public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
            TestActivity.this.finish();
        }
    };

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        //other stuff...

        registerReceiver(broadcastReceiver, new IntentFilter(STOP_COMMAND));
    }
}

That way, you can issue this adb command to stop your activity:

adb shell am broadcast -a com.example.TestActivity.STOP