So we test the connection to make sure ADB is working fine. But for older devices, you might need to do so. Step 3: Test if ADB is working, install device drivers if neededįor modern devices, they don’t usually need specific drivers to be detected by your desktop or laptop, Windows 10-powered laptops especially. Tap into that menu item and toggle/enable the setting for “USB Debugging”. Navigate back to Settings and you can now find the Developer Options menu available. Yes, it always feels like a secret agent thing every time. Now, with your most secret agent face on, tap the build number seven times to enable “Developer Options”. This will show you a number of things, but we’re interested in the information for “Build Number”. First, navigate to your phone’s Settings menu, then select “About Phone”. Step 2: Enable USB Debugging on your Android device Once downloaded, extract the archive to a folder on your desktop or laptop. There is a choice to make depending on the platform you use – Windows, Mac, or Linux. This download includes tools that interface with the Android platform, such as ADB, fastboot, and systrace. This is found in the official download page for SDK Platform Tools. These days, Android has finally given us a way to get ADB – the tool we most likely will need – in a smaller download so we can just use that, instead of downloading the whole Android Studio. That presented a problem where if you had a slow internet connection, you would have to wait a while. In the past, there was no getting around this, so you had to download the whole caboodle. These days, that would mean a 600+ MB download of Android Studio which includes SDK Tools, which in turn includes ADB. Installing ADB the proper, old fashioned way usually requires downloading the whole Android SDK. With ADB, users can control their connected Android device over USB from a computer, copy files back and forth, install and uninstall apps, flash system elements, run shell commands, and more.ĪDB is used for a number of geeky tricks for your Android which include flashing a stock ROM or update, flashing a custom recovery, gaining root access to your device, and other such things.

The Android Debug Bridge is a command-line utility included with Google’s Android SDK.

We need to tell you what ADB is and what it is used for.

Android studio adb inside of