Installing ADB on macOS

Question or issue on macOS:

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.

How to solve this problem?

Solution no. 1:

Option 1 – Using Homebrew

This is the easiest way and will provide automatic updates.

1. Install homebrew

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

2. Install adb

    brew cask 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)

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

9. Add platform-tools to your path

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

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

    source ~/.bash_profile 

11. Start using adb

    adb devices 

Solution no. 2:

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. 👍

Solution no. 3:

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 

Solution no. 4:

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.

Solution no. 5:

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.

Hope this helps!