What is adb?
The Android Debug Bridge (adb) is a development tool that facilitates communication between an Androiddevice and a personal computer. This communication is most often done over a USB cable, but Wi-Ficonnections are also supported.
adb is like a “Swiss-army knife” of Android development. It provides numerous functions that aredescribed in detail by the command adb --help. Some of the more commonly usedcommands are listed in the “popular adb commands” section below.
Installing adb and fastboot
Google hosts zips including only adb and fastboot. You can set these up for use with the instructions below.
On Windows
- Download the Windows zip from Google.
- Extract it somewhere - for example,
%USERPROFILE%\adb-fastboot - On Windows 7/8:
- From the desktop, right-click My Computer and select Properties
- In the System Properties window, click on the Advanced tab
- In the Advanced section, click the Environment Variables button
- In the Environment Variables window, highlight the
Pathvariable in the Systems Variable section and click the Edit button - Append
;%USERPROFILE%\adb-fastboot\platform-toolsto the end of the existing Path definition (the semi-colon separates each path entry)
- On Windows 10 or newer:
- Open the Start menu, and type “advanced system settings”
- Select “View advanced system settings”
- Click on the Advanced tab
- Open the “Environment Variables” window
- Select the
Pathvariable under “System Variables” and click the “Edit” button - Click the “New” button
- Insert
%USERPROFILE%\adb-fastboot\platform-toolsin the text field
- Download the USB drivers and follow the instructions there.
On macOS
- Install Homebrew
- Add
/opt/homebrew/bintoPATHby following “Next steps” listed at the end of installation output. - Install
android-platform-toolsby running the following command:brew install --cask android-platform-tools.
On Linux
- Download the Linux zip from Google.
- Extract it somewhere - for example,
~/adb-fastboot. - Add the following to
~/.profile:if [ -d "$HOME/adb-fastboot/platform-tools" ] ; then export PATH="$HOME/adb-fastboot/platform-tools:$PATH"fi - Log out and back in.
- You may also need to set up udev rules: see this repository for more info.
Setting up adb
To use adb with your device, you’ll need to enable developer options and USB debugging:
- Open Settings, and select “About”.
- Tap on “Build number” seven times.
- Go back, and select “Developer options”.
- Scroll down, and check the “Android debugging” or “USB debugging” entry under “Debugging”.
- Plug your device into your computer.
- On the computer, open up a terminal/command prompt and type
adb devices. - A dialog should show on your device, asking you to allow usb debugging. Check “always allow”, and choose “OK”.
If the dialog is not appearing or the list of devices is empty, check if you installedadbproperly.- On Windows: Make sure your device manager does show your phone and doesn’t show a yellow triangle next to it!
Congratulations! adb is now ready to use with your device.
Setting up fastboot
Using fastboot (if your device supports it) should simply involve rebooting to fastboot mode.While in fastboot mode, you can type fastboot devices to verify that your device is being detected.
Popular adb commands
adb shell- launches a shell on the deviceadb push <local> <remote>- pushes the file<local>to<remote>adb pull <remote> [<local>]- pulls the file<remote>to<local>. If<local>isn’t specified,it will pull to the current folder.adb logcat- allows you to view the device log in real-time. You can useadb logcat -b radioto view radio logs,andadb logcat -Cto view logs in colouradb install <file>- installs the given .apk file to your device
Need help?
You can find assistance with LineageOS on our subreddit, or in #LineageOS on Libera.Chat.
