I’ve been learning Corona lately, a tool for building mobile apps. Overall there is a lot of good stuff, though rough around some of the edges especially if you are building “business apps” – you know, anything that isn’t a game. But one thing that I really miss from building Android in Eclipse is the auto-install to my Android phone. Here is a way to get 1-click install to your Android device, in Windows.

1. You’ll need to have the Android SDK installed on your PC. More about that here.
2. You’ll need to have your Android device plugged in.
3. You’ll also need to install a freeware app called FileMenuTools – a fabulous tool that I’ve used for years.
4. Open FileMenuTools and in the top left, click “Add Command”.
5. In the Properties pane on the lower left, select “Run Program” for your action, for Menu Text I chose “Install on Android“, for icon browse to the SDK Manager.exe because it is an easy Android icon, for Element Types I chose “Only Files“, for Folders I chose “No“, for Files I chose Yes, and for Extensions I typed apk, then for Program you need to browse and find adb.exe in your SDK\program-tools\ directory, and for arguments enter install %FILENAMES%.

Now, if you right click on an APK file that the Corona SDK provides after a build, this should briefly pop up a command window while it copies and installs it to your device.

It will bypass the Install prompts and should show up directly in your Applications folder.