Installing ADB on macOS [duplicate]

530
votes

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.

5
androidmacosadb
and stackoverflow.com/questions/5526470/… – Jared Burrows
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
@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
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
ADB might already be installed at ~/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools/ stackoverflow.com/a/17901693 – Joe

5 Answers

1370
votes

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

Option 1 - Using Homebrew

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
140
votes

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. 👍

24
votes

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.

23
votes

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
7
votes

  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.