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With the command adb pull /sdcard/ I can copy all the contents of the internal memory of my Android phone into my current local directory.
And adb pull /mnt/extSdCard/ does the same with the external SD card. But that command always copies everything, even files I already have stored locally.
Is there any way to copy only new and modified files? (files with a newer date)
adb-sync - small, yet powerfull python script that can do all your asked and more... https://github.com/google/adb-sync
As described by ss-3-1415926535897932384626433 there is no flag, but you have to get a list of files first and then check if your local files match. I wrote a little script for it:
#!/bin/sh
rfolder=/sdcard/DCIM/Camera
lfolder=Camera
adb shell ls "$rfolder" > android.files
ls -1 "$lfolder" > local.files
rm -f update.files
touch update.files
while IFS= read -r q; do
# Remove non-printable characters (are not visible on console)
l=$(echo ${q} | sed 's/[^[:print:]]//')
# Populate files to update
if ! grep -q "$l" local.files; then
echo "$l" >> update.files
fi
done < android.files
script_dir=$(pwd)
cd $lfolder
while IFS= read -r q; do
# Remove non-printable characters (are not visible on console)
l=$(echo ${q} | sed 's/[^[:print:]]//')
echo "Get file: $l"
adb pull "$rfolder/$l"
done < "${script_dir}"/update.files
Adjust the remote folder rfolder and the local folder lfolder to locations of your own choice.
adb pull --sync -a (yes, you need -a as well to preserve timestamps). Works since version 27.0.1 (not before). In the other direction, adb push --sync (no -a needed funnily) is already available since at least 2015 (1.0.32 was the oldest version I tried). And yes: that works recursively and also updates older files (see my answer here).
adb pull doesn't seem to provide a flag to pull selected files.
As a workaround, you can do this: Use adb shell [Unix shell command] to copy selected files to a temporary location and then pull all files from that location.
Update:
You can use cp -u [source] [destination] unix shell command to copy only modified files on subsequent run. You can also use -r flag to use it on subdirectories recursive, if its required.
adb pull on that list.
Feb 28, 2013 at 16:35
Though not fully documented, starting with 27.0.1 aka platform tools r27 (not before) the following can be used:
adb push --sync local/ device/
# adb pull --sync -a device/. local/
(note the trailing dot on adb pull; without that you'd end up with local/device/*, see here; also the -a is needed only here to keep the timestamps of the files intact)
Not directly related to adb push: file permissions are not kept, which is probably due to the file system used. Files pushed to the internal SD card will always be set to 0660 and on the external card to 0771, which I could not even change using adb shell chmod on the device itself (though I received no error either on trying).
If you need more options as you might know them from rsync (e.g. --delete or --exclude), you can also take a look at the Python script better-adb-sync.
Update: running a few tests it seems --sync is simply ignored with adb pull even if no error is thrown: newer files on target have been overwritten! Not sure if implementation is planned, but with r27 being released in 2018 I'd not place a bet on that. With push it works as advertized, though.
