Skip to content

Features

Android phone

Browsentic can drive Chrome on your Android phone from your desktop browser. Plug the phone in, switch on Android in the side panel, and a tab opens showing the phone's Chrome live inside a phone frame. A conversation in that tab works on the phone: the same requests, with real taps and swipes on the phone instead of mouse clicks. Nothing is installed on the phone.

6 min read Edit this page on GitHub

Android support is experimental.

What you need

  • A Chromium browser (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc and the like) with the Browsentic extension, paired to Browsentic Bridge. Firefox has no Android switch.
  • adb, Android's debugging tool, from Google's platform-tools. The Bridge finds it on your PATH, in the Android SDK, and where Homebrew, winget, Scoop and Chocolatey put it. The android.adb setting lists every place it looks, and names your adb when it is somewhere else.
  • An Android phone with Google Chrome, connected by USB, or over Wi-Fi once it has been paired with adb.

browsentic android, or the Android tab in the Mac and Windows apps, checks each of these and says what is missing.

Setting up a phone

Once per phone:

  1. Turn on Developer options. On the phone, open Settings, then About phone, and tap Build number seven times.
  2. Turn on USB debugging. Open Settings, then System, then Developer options, and turn on USB debugging.
  3. Connect the phone to the computer with a USB cable. When the phone asks, tick "Always allow from this computer" and tap Allow.
  4. Or connect over Wi-Fi (Android 11 or later). In Developer options, turn on Wireless debugging and tap Pair device with pairing code. On the computer, run adb pair <ip:port> <code>, then adb connect <ip:port>.
  5. Open Chrome on the phone. Browsentic drives the Chrome app, so it has to be open. browsentic android open opens it for you.

After that, plug the phone in and open Chrome.

On Windows, many phones also need a USB driver from their maker, or Google's, before adb can see them. Android's OEM USB drivers page lists them.

Using it

The Android switch (a phone icon) is in the side panel's header. Until a phone is ready it is greyed out, and hovering it says why, such as no phone connected or adb not installed. Switch it on and a phone tab opens beside the tab you were on. It shows the page in front on the phone, kept up to date as it changes.

Typing /android (or /phone) in the composer does the same, and typed again it takes you back to the computer's browser. The / menu always lists it, greyed out with the same reason while no phone is ready.

  • Talk to it in the side panel while the phone tab is in front, exactly as you would for a desktop tab. The conversation belongs to the phone tab, and the agent's actions land on the phone.
  • Use it yourself. Click the picture to tap the phone, scroll on it to scroll, and type while it has focus to type on the phone. The bar above has back, forward, reload, the page's address (type an address or a search to go there) and the phone's tabs.
  • It follows the phone. Switch tabs on the phone itself and the picture follows.
  • You can see when the agent is at work. Agent working shows at the top of the phone frame while a run is going. The phone stays yours to use meanwhile.
  • Switch it off, or close the phone tab, to stop. Unplugging the phone or closing Chrome on it ends the session too, and the phone tab says why, with a button to reconnect.

The picture pauses while the phone tab is hidden, and while the phone's screen is off, because Chrome stops drawing then. The phone tab asks you to wake the phone.

What works on the phone

Reading and acting on a page work the same way: page info and text, waiting for an element, clicking, filling and typing, keys, choosing an option, selecting text, submitting forms, scrolling, dragging, screenshots, frames, searching a site, theming and the contrast audit, the phone's tabs, and timers. The differences:

On a desktop tab On the phone
A click is a script event, or a mouse click through Chrome's debugger Every click is a real tap
Hover opens menus There is no hover; menus open on a tap
Scrolling jumps Scrolling is a real scroll, so content that loads as you scroll does load
Typing is set or simulated in the page Typing is real keyboard input to the phone
A screenshot is of the desktop tab A screenshot is of the phone's screen, at the page's size
Tabs are your browser window's tabs Tabs are the phone's Chrome tabs

Blocked sites are checked against the phone's own address and its frames, a phone tab on a blocked site is never shown to the agent, and approvals work as they do on a desktop tab.

A-Eye works on the phone tab too. Press its button in the side panel and the phone tab's picture becomes the lens: the element under your pointer is outlined on the phone, and a click picks it without pressing it, so a link is not followed and a field does not open the phone's keyboard. Disabled buttons can be picked as well. Dragging still scrolls the page, ↑ widens the outline to the element around it, and Esc cancels. A tap on the phone itself picks too. The pick carries a photograph of the element from the phone. When the agent asks you to point at something, it works the same way.

Live tools work there as well. With the composer's Live tool switch on, the agent can write code for the phone's page; you approve it before it runs, as on a desktop tab. You can keep the result as a saved tool and run it with / on the phone tab. A saved tool cannot run on every visit on the phone, because nothing of Browsentic is installed there.

What is off on the phone

While the phone tab is in front, the side panel hides what only works in a desktop tab: recordings, scheduling, action cues and hands-free. Voice in the panel and attaching a file still work. They all come back when you switch to a desktop tab.

The agent is offered only the tools that work on the phone. Hovering, captchas, downloads, uploading a file to a page, recordings, a site's own tools, monitors and diagnostics stay on the desktop. If you ask for one of those, the agent says it is not available on the phone.

Privacy and safety

adb is a powerful connection: a computer that the phone allows over USB debugging can install apps, read files and control the phone. Browsentic uses it narrowly:

  • it reads the phone's model, Android and Chrome versions, screen size and whether the screen is on;
  • it opens Chrome when you ask it to;
  • it forwards one local port to Chrome's own debugging socket, and drives Chrome through that.

It installs nothing on the phone and touches no other app. The connection stays on your computer, between the Bridge and the phone. Switching Android off, closing the phone tab or unplugging the phone stops it.

Chrome on the phone holds your real sessions and logins, just like your desktop browser. The same approvals and blocked sites protect it.

If you never want the Bridge to use adb at all, set "android": { "enabled": false } in config.json.

Limits

  • One phone at a time.
  • Google Chrome on the phone: not Chrome Beta, Dev or Canary, and not other browsers.
  • The phone's screen has to be on and unlocked while the agent works.
  • A <select> opens the phone's own picker, which Browsentic cannot see. The agent sets the value instead.
  • New tabs always open in front on the phone, because Chrome on Android does that.

More in Limits. If a phone will not connect, see Troubleshooting.