Advanced & Automation Android 1.0+ Risk: POTENTIALLY_DISRUPTIVE

UI Stress & Monkey Testing

Generates pseudo-random streams of user events (clicks, touches, gestures, system events) to stress test app stability.

Command Syntax

adb shell monkey

Generic Syntax:

monkey [-p <PACKAGE_NAME>] [-v] [--throttle <MS>] [--pct-touch <PCT>] [--pct-motion <PCT>] [--ignore-crashes] [--ignore-timeouts] <EVENT_COUNT>

Options & Parameters

Flag	Description
-p <PACKAGE>	Constrain testing to specified package.
-v	Verbose mode: print detailed event stream.
--throttle <MS>	Delay in milliseconds between injected events.
--ignore-crashes	Continue injecting events even if application crashes.
--ignore-timeouts	Continue even if ANR (Application Not Responding) happens.
-s <SEED>	Reproduce identical event sequence using a fixed seed number.

Real-World Usage Examples

Send 5000 random user events to an app

Runs stress test on target app with 5,000 random events.

adb shell monkey -p com.example.app -v 5000

Output:

:Monkey: seed=1724589214 count=5000
:AllowPackage: com.example.app
:IncludeCategory: android.intent.category.LAUNCHER
// Event percentages:
//   0: 15.0%
//   1: 10.0%
Events injected: 5000
## Network stats: elapsed time=12400ms (0ms mobile, 0ms wifi, 12400ms not connected)
// Monkey finished

Run with 100ms throttle between events and ignore crashes

Runs human-speed stress test.

adb shell monkey -p com.example.app --throttle 100 --ignore-crashes --ignore-timeouts 1000

Output:

Events injected: 1000
// Monkey finished