Hardware and Power Buttons

Hardware Buttons

On Android devices, buttons representing the physical device's hardware buttons are displayed next to the device.

These buttons correspond to the Home, Power, Volume Down, Volume Up, and Back buttons as well as the Fingerprint sensor on the physical device.

Pause: Unlike a physical device, your virtual device can be paused. This action suspends device activity but does not shut down the device. Simply click to pause, and click again to unpause. While your device is in a paused state, you will still be billed for core hours. To avoid charges, power off the device when you are not using it.
Restart: The restart button is akin to rebooting a physical device. It's the same as powering the device off and on again.
Power On / Off: Powering the virtual device off is like powering off a physical device. All applications are shut down, and information about the current state of the device is not preserved. When a device is in the "Off" state, it becomes Stored, and it no longer occupies CPU cores.

These instructions guide how to open the App Switcher on Android devices using the command line or mouse gestures.

Navigate to the Console tab and enter the following command:

input keyevent KEYCODE_APP_SWITCH

Samsung Screen

You can find more information about keyevent commands in the Android developer documentation.

After your device is powered on, swipe up on the home screen then open Settings.

swipe up

In the Settings app, open System > Gestures > System Navigation > Gesture Navigation
Change the Gesture Navigation from the default 3-button navigation.

With Gesture navigation, swipe up from the bottom and hold to open the App Switcher.
With 2-button navigation, swipe up from the bottom to open the App Switcher.

3 button nav

You can also use our API to automate pressing and holding your virtual device hardware buttons.

Please see our API example code demonstrating how to hold down multiple hardware buttons simultaneously for a set time.