You can help adb to find your device by telling it about your device's 'Vendor ID,' essentially providing it with a hint. Maybe if you're working with some experimental or prototype or out-of-the-ordinary device, maybe it's just unknown and won't show up.

That being said, the quickest way to reset adb is to restart it with the following commands in sequence: adb kill-serverīut every now and then the adb devices command just fails to find your device. Seriously, 99% of the time 'it just works.' Most of the time nothing will need to be done to get the Mac to recognize the phone/device.

Update for some versions of adb, ~/.android/adb_usb.ini has to be removed.Įxecutive summary: Add the Vendor ID to ~/.android/adb_usb.ini and restart adb Sometimes just swapping cables will help. Important Update : As points out, there are some USB cables that are for charging only and do not transmit data.