on OS X, you can use SimMac's installer.

This has the pro of being updated automatically.

on some Linux distros, you can install the packages android-tools-adb and android-tools-fastboot via the resp.

You should be done at this point, and can use the full powers of the ADB command line. Not being a Windows user, I must leave the 'how to do this' to you. If you want them to be callable from wherever you are, without preceding the complete path, you need to add that path to your environment variables as well.

Also extract them into a directory of your choice. The Windows download holds a couple more files. A good place for that is at the end of your ~/.profile file to include an additional line like export PATH='~/bin:$PATH' (if you extracted the binaries to ~/bin). Finally, it's a good idea to include the chosen directory with your $PATH variable, so you can call adb from wherever you are. from the command line: chmod 0755 adb aapt). Adjust their file permissions to make them executable (e.g. At the time I'm writing this, this will only be two files: adb and aapt (the latter being used by QtADB, and not necessarily needed to execute ADB commands directly). Installation Linuxįor Linux, this is quite easy: Simply unpack the downloaded binaries into a directory of your choice. Not being familiar with Mac OS, I can not speak for it. For Linux, you find the necessary steps described in my answers here and here. Linux and Mac OS users might need to make their device known to their operating system. If your computer is running Windows, you will also need the special drivers for your device (no generic solution here, so you need to check this out yourself usually, those drivers are offered for download on the manufacturer's website). in the Download area of my Android site, where I try to keep up-to-date versions available – for Linux, MacOS, and Windows.

Requirementsįirst, you will need the basic binaries. I will try to explain how to do this, and hopefully cover the most used computer systems. To be able to run basic ADB commands in the context needed by an average user, a rudimentary installation is completely sufficient. In fact, it is not necessary to install the entire SDK if one does not want to use it for development.

Install adb tools