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I had issues finding a good solid tutorial on how to setup ADB for Mac.

How can I add ADB to macOS in such a way that it can be used in the terminal?

UPDATE

For those reading this post. Yes, as the edited response says. I was at the time looking for a tutorial with all steps as a beginner level guide.

Unlike Set up adb on Mac OS X, the intention of this question is to have a tutorial with all of the required installation steps to get ADB on macOS.

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9
  • and stackoverflow.com/questions/5526470/…
    – Jared Burrows
    Commented Jul 13, 2015 at 1:13
  • 1
    Mine seems to be more of a step process I wouldn't say it's a duplicate. More so a different way of going about it. Specially giving a place to download the adb files.
    – wesley franks
    Commented Jul 13, 2015 at 1:29
  • 1
    @wesleyfranks congratulations on having such a popular question! It's one of the top search results on Google for installing ADB on Mac. Also, if you feel like my answer is satisfactory, you can show that by marking it as Accepted.
    – brismuth
    Commented Dec 17, 2015 at 18:24
  • 1
    I was hoping my answer would be helpful too! LOL, guess not everyone likes your answer, but sense it is the popular answer I will mark it accepted in hopes people will see me as a team player. I'm for helping everyone get the right information so thank you @brismuth.
    – wesley franks
    Commented Dec 22, 2015 at 18:50
  • 3
    ADB might already be installed at ~/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools/ stackoverflow.com/a/17901693
    – Joseph Hansen
    Commented Mar 31, 2017 at 20:17

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
1629

Note for zsh users: replace all references to ~/.bash_profile with ~/.zshrc.

Option 1 - Using Homebrew

Homebrew is a package manager similar to apt on Linux. This is the easiest way and will provide automatic updates.

  1. Install the homebrew package manager

    /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

  2. Install adb

    brew install android-platform-tools

  3. Start using adb

    adb devices

Option 2 - Manually (just the platform tools)

This is the easiest way to get a manual installation of ADB and Fastboot.

  1. Delete your old installation (optional)

    rm -rf ~/.android-sdk-macosx/

  2. Navigate to https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools.html and click on the SDK Platform-Tools for Mac link.

  3. Go to your Downloads folder

    cd ~/Downloads/

  4. Unzip the tools you downloaded

    unzip platform-tools-latest*.zip

  5. Move them somewhere you won't accidentally delete them

    mkdir ~/.android-sdk-macosx
mv platform-tools/ ~/.android-sdk-macosx/platform-tools

  6. Add platform-tools to your path

    echo 'export PATH=$PATH:~/.android-sdk-macosx/platform-tools/' >> ~/.bash_profile

  7. Refresh your bash profile (or restart your terminal app)

    source ~/.bash_profile

  8. Start using adb

    adb devices

Option 3 - Manually (with SDK Manager)

  1. Delete your old installation (optional)

    rm -rf ~/.android-sdk-macosx/

  2. Download the Mac SDK Tools from the Android developer site under "Get just the command line tools". Make sure you save them to your Downloads folder.

  3. Go to your Downloads folder

    cd ~/Downloads/

  4. Unzip the tools you downloaded

    unzip tools_r*-macosx.zip

  5. Move them somewhere you won't accidentally delete them

    mkdir ~/.android-sdk-macosx
mv tools/ ~/.android-sdk-macosx/tools

  6. Run the SDK Manager

    sh ~/.android-sdk-macosx/tools/android

  7. Uncheck everything but Android SDK Platform-tools (optional)

enter image description here

  1. Click Install Packages, accept licenses, click Install. Close the SDK Manager window.

enter image description here

  1. Add platform-tools to your path

    echo 'export PATH=$PATH:~/.android-sdk-macosx/platform-tools/' >> ~/.bash_profile

  2. Refresh your bash profile (or restart your terminal app)

    source ~/.bash_profile

  3. Start using adb

    adb devices
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18
  • Thanks. I tried the homebrew version (I'm on Mavericks with XCode 5.0.1 with clang-500.2.79). Installation successful. adb finds my device. But when trying a adb backup -all I get a Buffer Error: 10 Installing the Android Studio and using that adb version solved my issue.
    – georg
    Commented Sep 19, 2015 at 18:54
  • @georg that's interesting. Were they two different adb versions?
    – brismuth
    Commented Sep 21, 2015 at 15:49
  • @georg I've also added steps now for a manual sdk-tools-only installation for cases like yours.
    – brismuth
    Commented Oct 14, 2015 at 17:37
  • 3
    On Mac OS X (El Capitan) The platform-tools are in a different directory, so instead replace step 9 above with echo 'export PATH=$PATH:~/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools/' >> ~/.bash_profile
    – Edwin
    Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 15:40
  • 1
    Good homebrew cask. Wish it was called simply adb, as running brew search adb returns 0 result. Opened an issue on homebrew-cask repo about it, by the way.
    – Nighto
    Commented Mar 13, 2019 at 15:04
185

If you've already installed Android Studio --

Add the following lines to the end of ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc (if using Oh My ZSH):

export ANDROID_HOME=/Users/$USER/Library/Android/sdk
export PATH=${PATH}:$ANDROID_HOME/tools:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools

Restart Terminal and you're good to go. 👍

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6
  • 2
    yeah you can use exec zsh or exec bash for restarting it :)
    – abe312
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 4:02
  • Had not added the last command in the terminal. This worked, after numerous searches and attempts. Thank you!
    – Emjey
    Commented Apr 4, 2017 at 14:09
  • 3
    I had to add those lines to ~/.bash_profile and it worked!
    – Martín De la Fuente
    Commented Feb 5, 2019 at 13:42
  • my zshrc location was at ==> /etc/zshrc and by adding the mentioned path at the end of the file everything become OK. thanks
    – Amir Mehrabi
    Commented Apr 8, 2020 at 8:39
  • 1
    If you don't want to have to restart you terminal, simply run source ~/.bashrc or source ~/.zshrc.
    – Caleb Koch
    Commented Jan 18, 2023 at 18:20
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Note that if you use Android Studio and download through its SDK Manager, the SDK is downloaded to ~/Library/Android/sdk by default, not ~/.android-sdk-macosx.

I would rather add this as a comment to @brismuth's excellent answer, but it seems I don't have enough reputation points yet.

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23

Option 3 - Using MacPorts

Analoguously to the two options (homebrew / manual) posted by @brismuth, here's the MacPorts way:

  1. Install the Android SDK:

    sudo port install android

  2. Run the SDK manager:

    sh /opt/local/share/java/android-sdk-macosx/tools/android

  3. As @brismuth suggested, uncheck everything but Android SDK Platform-tools (optional)

  4. Install the packages, accepting licenses. Close the SDK Manager.

  5. Add platform-tools to your path; in MacPorts, they're in /opt/local/share/java/android-sdk-macosx/platform-tools. E.g., for bash:

    echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/opt/local/share/java/android-sdk-macosx/platform-tools' >> ~/.bash_profile

  6. Refresh your bash profile (or restart your terminal/shell):

    source ~/.bash_profile

  7. Start using adb:

    adb devices
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2
  • Fixed it for me. :-)
    – Sai
    Commented Jul 28, 2016 at 10:42
  • Android for Mac OS port is broken:
    – Coliban
    Commented Dec 2, 2019 at 13:44
10

  1. You must download Android SDK from this link.

  2. You can really put it anywhere, but the best place at least for me was right in the YOUR USERNAME folder root.

  3. Then you need to set the path by copying the below text, but edit your username into the path, copy the text into Terminal by hitting command+spacebar type terminal. export PATH = ${PATH}:/Users/**YOURUSERNAME**/android-sdk/platform-tools/

  4. Verify ADB works by hitting command+spacebar and type terminal, and type ADB.

There you go. You have ADB setup on MAC OS X. It works on latest MAC OS X 10.10.3.

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4
  • 1
    I still don't understand why my answer isn't acceptable it's definitely a working solution. I don't understand why I have a negative vote?
    – wesley franks
    Commented Jan 30, 2016 at 21:26
  • 3
    hi, it's a matter of style. Your formatting is hard to read. 1. Generally writing in caps is equivalent of SCREAMING at people on the net. 2. Bolding it and bolding too much make things worse 3. This 'username' thing is not needed here, see the accepted answer to see better solution - your answer would be shorter and simpler. You can see the accepted answer and learn from the style - how to present things, and highlight them and make it clear. I followed that and it's just simple copy/paste a few times. Currently the accepted answer is also more complete.
    – kiedysktos
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 11:41
  • 2
    I edited your answer a bit to help you start making it look good - it can still get a lot of likes :)
    – kiedysktos
    Commented Oct 14, 2016 at 11:44
  • Ah, gotcha wasn't aware of that format issue. I believed it looked fine, but I understand that I could be wrong. Thanks for updating my answer this is apparently my most popular question (despite it being a duplicate). People can sometimes be harsh on others just trying to be apart of the community. That said, thank you for your assistance.
    – wesley franks
    Commented Jul 17, 2019 at 13:20

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