We’ve all got that drawer. You know the one—the final resting place for old smartphones, tablets, and smart home gadgets that are perfectly functional on a hardware level but have been rendered completely useless because the manufacturer decided to pull the plug on the backend servers. Usually, these devices end up as e-waste. But last week, Meta did something highly unusual and incredibly exciting for the hardware hacking and developer communities: they officially released an update for their deprecated Portal video-calling devices that unlocks the Android Debug Bridge (ADB).
For developers, this isn’t just about saving a niche smart display from the landfill. It’s a fascinating case study in hardware offramps, embedded Android development, and the potential of repurposing closed-source consumer hardware into custom, local-first development platforms. If you have an old Portal gathering dust, or if you're just interested in how we can salvage deprecated silicon, grab a coffee. Today, we are going to dive into what this means, how to access it, and how we can turn these high-spec smart displays into custom local dashboards, home automation controllers, or dedicated testing nodes.
The Technical Context: Why the Portal is Surprisingly Good Hardware
Before we look at how to unlock it, let's talk about why we should even care about the Meta Portal. From a pure hardware perspective, these devices were heavily subsidized by Meta when they were released. They aren’t cheap, sluggish smart mirrors; they are robust, well-engineered tablets wrapped in a speaker dock chassis.
Depending on the model you have (the Portal Mini, the standard Portal, or the Portal+), you are looking at:
- A highly capable MediaTek or Qualcomm SoC (System on Chip).
- A crisp, high-quality touchscreen display (up to 15.6 inches on the Portal+).
- A surprisingly high-fidelity speaker array with active crossover.
- A wide-angle camera with a built-in hardware privacy shutter.
- A far-field microphone array designed for voice cancellation and smart assistant integration.
Under the hood, the Portal runs Portal OS, which is a heavily customized fork of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Until now, this operating system was locked down tighter than Fort Knox. Standard Android developer options were stripped out, the bootloader was locked, and getting a shell on the device was virtually impossible without complex hardware exploits. By officially enabling ADB, Meta has handed developers the keys to the kingdom.
What is ADB and Why Does it Matter Here?
If you've ever done Android development, you are intimately familiar with ADB (Android Debug Bridge). It’s a versatile command-line tool that lets you communicate with a device. ADB facilitates a variety of device actions, such as installing and debugging apps, and it provides access to a Unix shell that you can use to run a variety of commands on the device.
By exposing ADB over a physical USB connection (and potentially over Wi-Fi), Meta is allowing us to bypass their launcher, install custom Android Application Packets (APKs), inspect system logs via logcat, and interact with the underlying Android system services. We can effectively treat the Portal as a stationary, high-performance Android tablet.
How to Enable ADB on Your Deprecated Portal
Meta has rolled out this capability in one of the final firmware updates for the device. To get started, you need to ensure your device is updated to the latest available software version and then put it into developer mode.
Step 1: Check Your Firmware and Enable Developer Mode
To enable ADB, navigate through the Portal's settings menu:
Settings > About > Legal & RegulatoryOn this screen, quickly tap the "Factory Reset" or "Serial Number" fields multiple times (a classic Android easter egg mechanism) to unlock the hidden Developer Options menu. Within this new menu, toggle the Enable ADB switch to "On".
Step 2: Connect via USB
Depending on your Portal model, you will need to connect the device to your development machine using a USB-C cable. On the Portal TV, this is the USB-C port on the back. On the standalone displays, you may need to use the service port located near the power input.
Once connected, fire up your terminal and verify that your system sees the device:
$ adb devices
List of devices attached
1a2b3c4d5e6f deviceIf you see your device listed, congratulations! You have successfully established a bridge to a piece of hardware that was, until recently, a closed brick.
The Developer's Sandbox: What Can We Do With It?
Now that we have shell access, what can we actually do with a Portal? Because it runs an AOSP-derived operating system, we can sideload standard Android applications. Let's look at a few highly practical developer projects you can build this weekend.
1. Turn it into a Home Assistant Dashboard
One of the best uses for a stationary, high-quality touch screen is a dedicated wall-mounted smart home controller. By sideloading the Home Assistant Android app, you can bypass the default Meta UI entirely.
To sideload an APK, you can download the target APK (for example, the Home Assistant Companion App) to your local machine and run:
$ adb install home-assistant-companion.apk
Performing Streamed Install
SuccessTo ensure the Home Assistant app launches automatically on boot and acts as the primary interface, we can use ADB to configure the package manager or run a lightweight automation script. While we might not be able to easily replace the system launcher without root access, we can force-start our app using the Activity Manager (am):
$ adb shell am start -n io.homeassistant.companion.android/io.homeassistant.companion.android.common.data.url.WebViewActivity2. A Dedicated Grafana or Prometheus Monitoring Station
If you are a DevOps engineer or a system administrator, you can never have too many monitors. Why not turn that old Portal into a dedicated, low-power system metrics dashboard? You can sideload a lightweight browser (like Fully Kiosk Browser) and configure it to point to your local Grafana instance.
Here is a quick bash script you can run from your development machine to automatically wake up the Portal, launch the browser, and navigate to your team's Grafana dashboard:
#!/bin/bash
# Wake up the device screen if it's asleep
adb shell input keyevent KEYCODE_WAKEUP
# Unlock the screen (if no swipe/pin is set)
adb shell input keyevent KEYCODE_MENU
# Launch Fully Kiosk Browser pointing to Grafana
adb shell am start -n de.fullykiosk.singleapp/.MainActivity \
-e "url" "http://192.168.1.150:3000/d/devops-dashboard"
echo "Grafana dashboard pushed to Portal!"3. A Local Video Streaming and Camera Node
The Portal has a phenomenal wide-angle camera with hardware-assisted auto-framing. By sideloading an RTSP server application, you can turn the Portal into a high-definition local IP camera that integrates seamlessly into your local security setup (like Frigate or ZoneMinder) without sending a single byte of video data to external cloud servers.
You can use ADB to inspect the camera capabilities and verify that the system is recognizing the hardware correctly:
$ adb shell dumpsys media.cameraThe Broader Implications: A Blueprint for Responsible E-Waste Management
While hacking on old hardware is undeniably fun, there is a much larger architectural and ethical point to be made here. Meta's decision to provide a clean software "offramp" for deprecated hardware is something we should actively advocate for across the entire tech industry.
Too often, IoT and smart home devices are designed with a hard dependency on proprietary cloud backends. When those backends become too expensive to maintain, or when a company pivots, the devices are bricked. This is bad for consumers, terrible for the environment, and a missed opportunity for the developer community.
By enabling ADB, Meta has demonstrated a viable alternative: The Local-First Offramp. When a product reaches End-of-Life (EOL), the manufacturer can strip away the cloud dependencies, open up developer interfaces, and allow the open-source community to take over maintenance and utility. It costs the company very little in engineering overhead—often just compiling a final firmware update with a few configuration flags toggled—but it extends the lifespan of the physical hardware indefinitely.
Wrapping Up: What Will You Build?
Meta’s move to unlock ADB on the Portal series is a massive win for hardware preservationists, smart home enthusiasts, and developers alike. It takes a piece of high-quality, beautifully engineered hardware out of the waste cycle and drops it straight into our development environments.
Whether you want to build a dedicated Kubernetes monitoring screen, a slick smart home dashboard, or a custom video conferencing node powered entirely by local-first software, the door is now wide open.
Do you have an old Portal lying around that you’re planning to dust off? Or have you successfully sideloaded your favorite developer tools onto one yet? Let me know in the comments below, or share your custom setups over on Twitter/X at @CodingWithAlex!
Until next time, happy coding—and happy hardware hacking!