I am trying to get the output of android shell command 'getprop' with java since getprop() always returns null no matter what. I tried this from developer.android.com: Process process = null; try { process = new ProcessBuilder() .command("/system/bin/getprop", "build.version") .redirectErrorStream(true) .start(); } catch (IOException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } InputStream in = process.getInputStream(); //String prop = in.toString(); System.out.println(in); process.destroy(); However what is printed is not the output but a bunch of characters and numbers (dont have the exact output right now). How can i get the output of the process? Thanks!