Android: adb: Permission Denied

According to adb help:

adb root                     - restarts the adbd daemon with root permissions

Which indeed resolved the issue for me.

Without rooting: If you can't root your phone, use the run-as <package> command to be able to access data of your application.

Example:

$ adb exec-out run-as com.yourcompany.app ls -R /data/data/com.yourcompany.app/

exec-out executes the command without starting a shell and mangling the output.

The reason for "permission denied" is because your Android machine has not been correctly rooted. Did you see $ after you started adb shell? If you correctly rooted your machine, you would have seen # instead.

If you see the $, try entering Super User mode by typing su. If Root is enabled, you will see the # - without asking for password.

You might need to activate adb root from the developer settings menu. If you run adb root from the cmd line you can get:

root access is disabled by system setting - enable in settings -> development options

Once you activate the root option (ADB only or Apps and ADB) adb will restart and you will be able to use root from the cmd line.