MThread Draw

It turns an ordinary photograph into touch strokes and draws it on an Android phone, over ADB, with nothing installed on the device. A drawing of five hundred points lands in about two seconds.

Trace it yourself

These are the actual strokes the program sends to a phone, in the order it sends them. Drag along the grey lines and try to cover them. The clock starts when you do.

0%covered
0.0syour time
MThread Draw

Drag on the drawing to start.

Why it is quick

Every touch on Android normally costs a process. Sending a thousand of them that way takes minutes, which is why anything continuous - a gesture, a line, a signature - is unusable through the obvious route.

RoutePer point1,500 points
adb shell input~110 ms2 min 45 s
raw /dev/inputmicrosecondsrefused by any recent Pixel
on-device injectormicrosecondsabout 4.5 s, and the pacing is ours

The last row is the one that matters: when the time between points belongs to us, a drawing can arrive instantly or it can arrive the way a hand would have made it, tremor and overshoot included.

Get it

WindowsAn installer, or a folder you unzip. Nothing else to install: Python, OpenCV and adb all travel inside it.
macOSA disk image, for Apple Silicon and Intel.
LinuxFrom source, three commands.
Releases Read the docs