Since Google Glass is currently only available for “Explorers”, the usability is quite limited and the device requires some hacking. Since the Glass-specific OS is updated regularly this will change soon but up until then, the following trick will come in handy:
Install and run an APK on Google Glass:
Well, currently the standard Glass launcher is quite limited and only allows for starting some pre-installed applications. You could either install a custom launcher like Launchy or do it without any modifications at all: In a nutshell, we will install the APK, find out the name of the app’s launching activity and then launch it. So no modifications and no prior knowledge of the application’s code is needed.
- Connect the Google Glass to your computer (you should have the Android SDK installed) and enable the debug mode on your device.
- Open a terminal and install the APK via
adb install <apk path>. - Find the android tool aapt (located in
<sdk>\build-tools\<version>). - Retrieve the package name and the activity to launch:
aapt dump badging <apk path> | grep launchable-activity. - Now you have all necessary information to launch the activity whenever you want:
adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -n <package name>/<activity name>. - As an example with the password app Passdraw (currently not ported to Glass 🙂 ):
adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -n com.passdraw.free/com.passdraw.free.activities.LandingActivity