Android Debugging Bridge (ADB), as the name suggests, is a command-line utility that allows developers to debug various parts of their applications. However, it is not restricted to just developers. If you want to access certain features of the Android platform that are not otherwise accessible, you too can use the ADB commands by installing ADB on your computer, be it Windows, macOS, Linux, or Chrome OS. Once you install it, there are numerous cool things that you can do with ADB on your Android device. Plus, there are various apps that require ADB permissions to work. So, if you have been confused about how to install and use ADB on Windows, macOS, Linux or Chrome OS, we have you covered.
Even if you install ADB on your computer, it is of no use unless you set up your Android device first to work with ADB. So in case you are not sure how to do that, follow the steps below to find out.
Firstly, download the ADB Platform Tools for Windows from Google’s official page. Once downloaded, extract the contents of this file on your Windows PC using a file archiver utility like WinRAR.
Now head over to the extracted folder, and click on the address bar. Now, type “cmd” and hit enter. Instantly, a command prompt window will open up in the ADB directory.
Here, we will take a slightly different path to install ADB on macOS. We will have to install Homebrew first on macOS and then we can install the Android platform-tools easily. Homebrew is an open-source package manager that installs the missing packages. So with all that said, here we begin.
ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
- After that, install the ADB platform-tools from the below command.
brew install android-platform-tools –cask
- Download the ADB Platform Tools for Linux from Google’s official page and unzip the file to a suitable location like your home directory.
- After that, open the Linux terminal and move to the extracted folder location. Execute the below command to move to the particular folder. Make sure to change the username to your actual Linux username.
cd /home/arjun/platform-tools
- Finally, your Android device will show up on the Linux Terminal with the serial number. This is how you can install and set up ADB on Linux systems.
Before I move forward, let me clarify that your Chromebook should have Play Store support; Chrome OS should be on the Developer Channel and have Linux enabled on your machine. To move to Developer Channel, open Settings -> About Chrome OS -> Additional Details -> Change Channel to Dev. Now having said all of that, let’s learn how to install ADB on Chrome OS.
sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb
- If the Terminal shows “Permission Denied” or “Command Not Found” error then run the adb start-server command first and then try again with the adb devices command.
How to Use ADB on Windows, macOS, Linux and Chrome OS
After you have successfully installed ADB on your Windows PC, Mac, Linux system or Chromebook, using it is just a matter of executing various ADB commands in the Terminal. Just make sure that you have connected your Android device to your computer while USB debugging is enabled. After this, you can try different commands and experience Android a whole lot differently. To help you get started, given below are a few of the most commonly used ADB commands.
