Stop Media Playback through adb I'm testing some settings on a phone, and unfortunately the only control I have is through adb right now. My issue is that while I can start playback of a music file through the following command, I have no way of stopping it so I can perform the next iteration.

adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.View -d "file:///sdcard/Music/mediatest.mp3" -n "com.android.music/.MediaPlaybackActivity"


I don't know if it's possible to end the playback using another adb command, but it doesn't look like it to me - I see there are no Intents that seem to perform that function, nor any activities that are made to stop the media playback.
Use KeyEvent to do the job.

adb shell input keyevent 85


85 corresponds to KEYCODE_MEDIA_PLAY_PAUSE. More keycodes can be found  here or here.

Alternatively, if the activity featuring Play/Pause options is in foreground then you can do:

adb shell input touchscreen tap &lt;X&gt; &lt;Y&gt;


where &lt;X&gt; and &lt;Y&gt; are the coordinates of the tap that you would perform for Play/Pause using your fingers. See my answer here to know how to obtain them (step 1 and 2 under Instructions for Tasker and Xposed Additions).

Or, you can opt to completely kill the app using:

adb shell am force-stop &lt;PKG_NAME&gt;


Edit

Kitkat and above has the command media whose usage goes as,

adb shell media dispatch KEY


KEY can be play, pause, play-pause, mute, headsethook, stop, next, previous, rewind, record, fast-forword. (Source)