Android Screencast: Android screen to Windows PC

Projecting the Android device's screen to your laptop/pc is made easier by using the Android Screencast tool. No need to install any app on your device, all you need is Android screencast files, Android SDK and Java on your PC.

Prerequisite:

• Android SDK must be installed and ready to use.
• ADB should be configured and ready to use.
• Java must be installed and ready to use. The version should not be too old to prevent any configuration issue (I had Java 1.8.x on my system)
• An Internet connection

Steps:

• Download Android screencast jlnp file from https://code.google.com/archive/p/androidscreencast/downloads
• Save it on your PC. Let's say inside "Test" folder in D drive
• Connect the Android device to your system using a USB cable.
• To check the proper functioning of your device open a command prompt window and type "adb devices" command. The output should be something like "02157df2d2b10c29  device".
• Device detected by adb command can only be used successfully with a screencast tool.
• Now open the window's run command prompt and type following command

           javaws <Path to the Android screencast jlnp file downloaded in the first step>

          The sample command would look like javaws  "D:\Test\androidscreencast.jnlp"

This command would launch a window on your PC mirroring the device screen. Using this you can interact with your device and can even record a video of the events performed on your device.

Running Locally

This whole process can be executed locally as well without requiring any internet connection. 

The .jnlp file itself doesn't include the code, it downloads androidscreencast.jar and ddmlib.jar instead.

Steps:

1. To execute it locally download both the corresponding jar files i.e. androidscreencast.jar and ddmlib.jar from https://code.google.com/archive/p/androidscreencast/downloads and place it in your PC. 
2. Edit your Android Screencast jlnp file (in an editor) to point to these two files.
3. Replace the line codebase="http://androidscreencast.googlecode.com/files/" with something like codebase="file:///D:/Test/androidscreencast/"  (Where androidscreencast is the folder which contains both the downloaded jars )
4. Make sure href parameter in xml (located in the 3rd or 4th line at the top) is set to the name of the jlnp file. Something like href="androidscreencast.jnlp" where "androidscreencast.jnlp"is the name of the downloaded Android screencast jlnp file.
5. If needed then change the xml version to 1.0 something like this

           <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>    
    6. Save the above changes.

After the above changes the XML of Android Screencast jlnp file should look like this:

You are all set, issue the following command to start your screencast locally.

javaws  "D:\Test\androidscreencast.jnlp"