---
title: Phone Control (drive an Android phone from Omniscio)
---

# Phone Control (drive an Android phone from Omniscio)

## What it is

### What it is

An optional, in-development feature that lets Omniscio drive a connected **Android** phone over the local Android Debug Bridge (`adb`). It has **two surfaces**, both off the same feature flag:

1. **Agent tools** — with the feature on, any Omniscio session gets a set of `mobile_*` tools (tap, swipe, type, take a screenshot, list/launch/install apps, press buttons, open a URL) via the bundled **`@mobilenext/mobile-mcp`** MCP server. An agent can then operate the phone as part of a task.
2. **The "Phone" panel** — a desktop sidebar panel (Developer Tools group) where **you** drive a connected device yourself: pick the device, watch its screen live, wake it, and launch any installed app by clicking.

## Where to find it

Once revealed, a **Phone** row appears under the **Developer Tools** sidebar group. The reveal switch is **Settings → Lab → Phone Control**.

## How it behaves

### Enabling it

It ships hidden and **off by default**. Reveal it via **Settings → Lab → Phone Control** (`phoneControlEnabled`) or the env flag `AMC_SHOW_PHONE_CONTROL=1`. Once on, a **Phone** row appears under the Developer Tools sidebar group, and agent sessions start getting the `mobile_*` tools.

**First-enable setup is automatic.** The moment you turn it on, Omniscio provisions the runtime with **no manual install**: it detects an existing `adb` (Android platform-tools) and the mobile-mcp runtime, and if either is missing it downloads them once into its own data folder. Until the runtime is present, the agent tools stay dormant (a session never gets a phone tool whose runtime isn't ready).

### Connecting a phone

- **USB:** plug the phone in and turn on **USB debugging** (Developer options), then accept the "Allow USB debugging" prompt on the phone.
- **Wireless:** pair over `adb` (`host:port`) and use the panel's connect action; the panel remembers the link and reconnects it if it drops.

### The Phone panel

- **Device picker** — every connected device (`adb devices`); pick which one the panel drives.
- **Live screen** — a screenshot of the selected device, re-captured every couple of seconds, shown as a phone-shaped image.
- **Wake** — wakes the device's screen.
- **Apps** — the device's third-party (user-installed) apps; click **Launch** to open one.
- **Refresh** — re-scan for connected devices.

The panel does no background work when it's closed — the polling is tied to the open panel.

### Wireless auto-reconnect

A wireless `adb` link drops silently (the device just disappears). The panel **remembers** every wireless address you successfully connected to this session and, on its device poll, quietly re-issues `adb connect` for any that dropped — so a flaky Wi-Fi link self-heals without you re-typing the address. USB devices are never "reconnected" this way (they don't need it).

### Android vs iPhone

Phone Control drives **Android** locally on Windows, macOS, and Linux. **iPhone is not supported locally** — Apple restricts iPhone automation to a Mac, so there is no local iPhone path from a Windows PC. A paid **Mobile Next Cloud** route (drive a real iOS/Android device in the cloud) is a possible future addition, not part of this version.

### Safety & scope

- **Desktop-only.** Both surfaces shell out to a local `adb` binary, so the panel and the agent tools are refused over the mobile/web bridge — you use them from the desktop app.
- **Off by default**, behind the in-development gate; every phone command refuses to run unless the feature is on.
- **No shell, strict input.** Device ids, package names, and addresses are validated against a strict character allowlist and passed to `adb` as separate arguments (never through a shell), so a hostile device or app name can't inject a command.
- **No secrets, no telemetry.** The MCP entry writes no credentials into the session config, and the mobile-mcp server's usage telemetry is disabled.

## Related

- [agent-tools.md](agent-tools.md) — the tool surface an agent session gains when Phone Control is on.
- [drive-amc-cockpit.md](drive-amc-cockpit.md) — the other tool that drives a real UI from a session, pointed at the app itself.