The Easiest Way to Install Android's ADB and Fastboot Tools on Any OS

If youve ever tried toroot your Android phoneorflash a ROM, you may have heard about ADB and/or fastboot.

These two tools are surprisingly powerful, but can be a bit overly complex to install.

Heres how to do it the easy way.

Update: Googlerecently released ADB and fastboot as a standalone download.

Now you dont need to download a huge developer kit just to mod youre phone!

Weve updated our guide below to reflect the changes and to use Googles official download instead of third-party services.

What are ADB and Fastboot?

These two tools allow you to send terminal commands to your phone from your rig via USB.

Fastboot:When it’s crucial that you modify your phones firmware, fastboot is the tool you need.

You cant flash whole ROMs with it, but its helpful for many things that ADB cant do.

Fastboot isnt enabled for all phones, so you may have to check your specific unit.

Fortunately, Google recently made it easy to get these two without all the junk.

you’re free to download the Platform Tools packagefrom the SDK website here.

There are separate packages for Windows, Mac, and Linux so download the appropriate version for your platform.

By default your machine already knows where to finda few really useful tools.

Depending on which version of Windows youre using, these steps may be slightly different.

Click View advanced system tweaks.

smack the box that says Environment Variables.

Under System variables press the variable named Path.

Be sure to include the semicolon at the beginning so Windows knows youre adding a new folder.

(Windows 10): Click New and paste the folder path where you extracted the Platform Tools.

Editing the macOS and Linux PATH files are a little more complicated than on Windows.

However, if youre comfortable with a command line, itsstill pretty simple.

Save the file and press Cmd+Q to quit your text editor.

In your terminal entersource ~/.bash_profileto run your Bash profile for the first time.