The Android SDK is composed of multiple packages that are required for app development.
This page lists the most important command-line tools that are
available, organized by the packages in which they're delivered.
You can install and update each package using
Android Studio's
SDK Manager
or the
sdkmanager
command-line tool.
All of the packages are downloaded into your Android SDK directory, which
you can locate as follows:
- In Android Studio, click
File > Project Structure
.
- Select
SDK Location
in the left pane.
The path is shown under
Android SDK location
.
Set environment variables
We recommend setting the environment variable for
ANDROID_HOME
when using
the command line. Also, set your command search path to include
ANDROID_HOME/tools
,
ANDROID_HOME/tools/bin
, and
ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools
to find the most common tools. The steps
vary depending on your OS, but read
How to set environment variables
for general guidance.
Located in:
android_sdk
/cmdline-tools/
version
/bin/
Note: The Android SDK Command-Line Tools package, located in
cmdline-tools
, replaces the SDK Tools package, located in
tools
. With
the new package, you can select the version of the command line tools you want to install,
and you can install multiple versions at a time. With the old package, you can only install the
latest version of the tools. Thus, the new package lets you depend on specific versions of the
command-line tools without having your code break when new versions are released. For information
about the deprecated SDK Tools package, see the
SDK Tools release notes
.
If you are not using Android Studio, you can download the command-line tools package
here
.
apkanalyzer
- Provides insight into the composition of your APK after the build process completes.
avdmanager
- Lets you create and manage Android Virtual Devices (AVDs)
from the command line.
lint
- Scans code to help you identify and correct problems
with the structural quality of your code.
retrace
- For applications compiled by R8,
retrace
decodes an obfuscated stack trace that
maps back to your original source code.
sdkmanager
- Lets you view, install, update, and uninstall packages for the Android SDK
Located in:
android_sdk
/build-tools/
version
/
See
SDK Build Tools release notes
for more
information.
This package is required to build Android apps. Most of the tools in this package are
invoked by the build tools and not intended for you. However, the following
command-line tools might be useful:
AAPT2
- Parses, indexes, and compiles Android resources into a binary format that
is optimized for the Android platform and packages the compiled resources
into a single output.
apksigner
- Signs APKs and checks whether APK signatures will be verified
successfully on all platform versions that a given APK supports.
zipalign
- Optimizes APK files by ensuring that all uncompressed data starts with
a particular alignment relative to the start of the file.
Note:
You can have multiple versions of the build tools
to build your app for different Android versions.
Located in:
android_sdk
/platform-tools/
See
SDK Platform Tools release notes
for more
information.
These tools are updated for every new version of the Android platform to support new features
and fix or improve the tools, and each update
is backward compatible with earlier platform versions.
In addition to downloading from the SDK Manager, you can download the SDK Platform Tools
here
.
adb
- Android Debug Bridge (adb) is a versatile tool that lets you manage the state of an
emulator instance or Android-powered device. You can also use it to install an APK on a
device.
etc1tool
- A command-line utility that lets you encode PNG images to the ETC1
compression standard and decode ETC1 compressed images back to PNG.
fastboot
- Flashes a device with platform and other system images. For flashing instructions,
see
Factory Images for Nexus and
Pixel Devices
.
logcat
- Invoked by adb to view app and system logs.
Located in:
android_sdk
/emulator/
See
Android Emulator release notes
for more
information.
This package is required to use the Android Emulator. It includes the following:
emulator
- A QEMU-based device-emulation tool that you can use to debug and test
your applications in an actual Android run-time environment.
mksdcard
- Helps you create a disk image that you can use with the emulator
to simulate the presence of an external storage card, such as an SD card.
Note:
Prior to revision 25.3.0, the emulator tools were included with the
SDK Tools package.
Jetifier
Jetifier
reads a library that uses
Support Library classes and outputs an equivalent library that uses the newer
AndroidX classes.