Record/Capture Android App Behavior - Convert To Animated GIF

Question

I would like to capture/record the behavior of my Android app, running on an emulator and make a GIF image out it. Just like this one -

Answer 1

You can record a video from your emulator or real device using the standard ADB tool:

adb shell screenrecord /sdcard/foo.mp4

To convert the video from MP4 to animated GIF, use ffmpeg (again, a standard, open-source tool):

 ffmpeg -i foo.mp4 foo.gif

Some refinements

Given that phones nowadays have huge resolutions, a 10-second GIF can easily exceed several megabytes in size. To avoid that, record at a lower resolution by passing a --size XXXxYYY argument to screenrecord:

adb shell screenrecord --size 1024x768 /sdcard/compact.mp4

If you need to install ADB on Linux, just run sudo apt install adb.

If you want to trim the beginning or the end of the video, pass the following arguments to ffmpeg:

• -ss 00:00:05 - where to start (e.g. 5 seconds into the video)
• -t 00:00:10 - total duration (e.g. 10 seconds)

No need for video editors or to upload your possibly confidential screencast online.