Installing an app from apk on storage vs. through adb

Question

As the title suggests, is there a difference between installing an app from an .apk file from local storage (i.e. SD Card) and installing the same file through adb? I'm noticing different behavior based on these methods on installation. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: In case someone stumbles upon this in the future, I want to provide an update as to what was causing the issue. I was experiencing the same issue as outlined in this question: How to prevent multiple instances of an activity when it is launched with different intents. I was able to pick up the issue by using the following command while my app was running:

adb shell dumpsys activity <package-name>.

This allowed me to view the back stack and I noticed that when I resumed the app after hitting the home button, new instances of the activities were being created, but the old instances were in the back stack.

When I install through adb, my app is behaving exactly how it should but when manually installing, the wrong screen appears when I background the app and resume — Rahin, Sep 26 '13 at 19:13
you need to make sure you are installing the correct .apk (not old) — Shamim Ahmmed, Sep 26 '13 at 19:15
I'm fairly sure that isn't the problem since I placed the apk to a new directory on the SD card — Rahin, Sep 26 '13 at 19:18

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 26 '13 at 19:27

3

When you use adb you are invoking the debugger too. It resets the whole package's variables and data each time you run it.

But if you just run it like a released software you may not be releasing or resetting everything and have things that persist between using your app.

answered Sep 26 '13 at 19:27

Jesse Palmer

64
3

Is there a way to make install from storage same behaviour as install from command? – user2201789 Apr 20 '21 at 16:43

Installing an app from apk on storage vs. through adb

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