Unlock Screen with ADB Android 4.1.2

Question

I have a Sprint Galaxy S3 (v4.1.2?) that I've rooted with CWM. Last week the glass and display cracked, so now I can't access it directly.

I'm able to access it with adb so would like to use something like droid@screen or androidscreencast to access it.

The problem I'm having is with the screen display lock. It's set to press-then-tilt-forward to unlock the screen but I can't figure out how to send those events using adb to do it successfully.

Why doesn't droid@screen or androidscreencast do that directly anyway?

I've tried sending various keyevents including 82,83,1,3, among others, and none seem to have any effect. What is the proper keycode to send to disable the screen lock?

Thanks, Alex

Answer 1

You could check whether there's a way to disable Keyguard (there must be some intent to use, as many apps like e.g. Tasker support that). That would turn any keylock off. One example how to do that I just found at Google Groups. First, that thread says the keycode should be 59 (keycode.KEYCODE_SHIFT_LEFT), but then also offers alternatives like:

$ adb shell
# cd /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases
# sqlite3 settings.db
sqlite> update system set value="-1" where name="screen_off_timeout";
sqlite> .quit
$

Heavy hack :) I'd recomment to check the value beforehand, so you can use the same way to revert things back (i.e. lock the screen again). Also, that rather looks like it would only disable the screen timeout (but not actually disable the lock if the screen is already locked). As a similar trick is used in Cannot unlock tablet as have no internet connection?, that might serve as an alternative:

> adb -d shell
# sqlite3 data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db
sqlite> update system set value=0 where name='lock_pattern_autolock';
sqlite> .exit
# exit

But this one only applies if you use pattern lock.

As written above, there should also be a way to do that via some intent, but I could not find a clue on which one that might be.