how come my android devices are not visible on my Mac?

android eclipse samsung-mobile nexus-4 lg
mdarwin picture mdarwin · Feb 15, 2014 · Viewed 12.9k times · Source

I'm new to android development so apologies if this is a stupid question.

I'm having trouble seeing my android devices in Eclipse. I've switched on USB debugging, configured them to connect as a camera not mass storage, but when I run ./adb devices, there's no device showing, even though I have a Samsung Galaxy and a LG Nexus connected via USB. On both phones I get a notification saying "USB debugging connected" and "connected as a camera" so the phone obviously thinks it's connected.

The problem appears to be intermittent. Sometimes the Galaxy shows up:

Macbook:~/workspace/android-sdks/platform-tools ./adb devices
List of devices attached 
3334AB246B5200EC    device

Then I unplug and reconnect it, and it disappears.

I've tried 3 cables and 2 devices now. Should I just give up and use an emulator instead?

Answer

Ben Wheeler picture Ben Wheeler · Dec 20, 2014

I had to download the Android File Transfer mac application, and then it worked fine. I also had to use the right USB cord -- some don't have a data channel.

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