SkieHow do I install adb on Mac, Windows and Linux?
Install adb with one command: brew install android-platform-tools on Mac, winget install Google.PlatformTools on Windows, or sudo apt install adb on Debian and Ubuntu Linux. Alternatively download Google's platform-tools zip and add its folder to your path. You install adb once per computer, then reuse it for every device.
On a Mac with Homebrew, run brew install android-platform-tools in Terminal. On Windows 10 or 11, open PowerShell and run winget install Google.PlatformTools. On Debian or Ubuntu Linux, run sudo apt install adb. Other Linux distributions have an equivalent package, usually called android-tools or adb.
If you cannot use a package manager, download the platform-tools zip for your system from Google's Android developer site, unzip it somewhere permanent, and either run adb from that folder or add the folder to your system path. On Windows this means editing the Path environment variable, and on Mac or Linux adding a line to your shell profile.
Close the terminal and open a new one, then run adb version to confirm. If it prints a version, you are done. Check the exact package names against the current instructions on your operating system, because package managers change over time and Skie does not control them.
Windows users sometimes also need a USB driver for the device. Most modern Android tablets work with the standard Windows driver, but if adb devices shows nothing even with debugging on, install the maker's USB driver.
You do this once per computer. A second laptop needs its own install, and a reinstalled operating system does too. After that, provisioning is a matter of connecting the device and pasting the command from the Provision page. If you would rather not install anything, use the Skie Provision app from an Android phone.
- Mac: brew install android-platform-tools
- Windows: winget install Google.PlatformTools
- Linux: sudo apt install adb
- Confirm with adb version in a new terminal