How to Update or Re-Install the newest version of ADB?

Question

I have an android based phone and I need ADB for installing new versions. However, until today ADB was working perfectly but today I got an error, it says "you need 1.0.32 or newer version." Yes, error is clear enough. Problem is, how ?

For the records, I've tried to remove ADB. With :

sudo apt-get remove android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot

Then I re-installed it with :

sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot

Before this commands my ADB version was 1.0.31, still it is 1.0.31. But here ( http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html#Other) As far as I see, there is new version, 1.0.35. But with terminal All I'm getting is 1.0.31. I've downloaded 1.0.35 zip but I don't know what to do with it.

How Can I uprade my ADB?

Answer 1

If you think, you have latest SDK but the adb tool is older one,

Use,

# adb version
Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.31
# wget -O - https://skia.googlesource.com/skia/+archive/cd048d18e0b81338c1a04b9749a00444597df394/platform_tools/android/bin/linux.tar.gz | tar -zxvf - adb
# sudo mv adb /usr/bin/adb
# sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/adb
# adb version
Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.32

Refernce http://bernaerts.dyndns.org/linux/74-ubuntu/328-ubuntu-trusty-android-adb-fastboot-qtadb

Answer 2

You can download the latest SDK including adb here. When you extract this archive, there is a readme which explains how to install the SDK. I list it here for your reference.

Welcome to the Android SDK!

The Android SDK archive initially contains only the basic SDK tools. It does
not contain an Android platform or any third-party libraries. In fact, it
doesn't even have all the tools you need to develop an application.

In order to start developing applications, you must install the Platform-tools
and at least one version of the Android platform, using the SDK Manager.

Platform-tools contains build tools that are periodically updated to support new
features in the Android platform (which is why they are separate from basic
SDK tools), including adb, dexdump, and others.

To install Platform-tools, Android platforms and other add-ons, you must
have an Internet connection, so if you plan to use the SDK while
offline, please make sure to download the necessary components while online.

To start the SDK Manager, please execute the program "android".

From the command-line you can also directly trigger an update by
executing:
  tools/android update sdk --no-ui

Tip: use --help to see the various command-line options.


For more information, please consult the Android web site at
  http://developer.android.com/sdk/

Once installed (you will have to install Java if you don't have it already), you can navigate to android-sdk-linux/platform-tools and execute adb from there by typing

./adb [options]

I freely admit this may not be the most elegant solution but it works for me. ISTR that on a different Ubuntu machine I managed a minimal install with just platform-tools sans Java, but I cannot find my notes on that.

Answer 3

There are great answers already posted here but for an extremely simple method, just grab the latest platform tools without all the extra bloat and combine with a bash alias for convenience.

This will create a new directory 'Android' at the root of your home directory. Change the paths below (and in my example bash aliases) if you prefer a different location.

mkdir ~/Android && cd ~/Android

Next download and extract the platform tools from Google:

wget https://dl.google.com/android/repository/platform-tools-latest-linux.zip && unzip platform-tools-latest-linux.zip

Now the latest adb, fastboot, and other tools are available to run directly from the newly extracted 'platform-tools' directory. Use bash aliases to make them easier to use (after uninstalling the obsolete distribution packages to avoid conflicts). This example command will alias the adb command, making it immediately available for use:

echo "alias adb='~/Android/platform-tools/adb'" >> ~/.bash_aliases && source ~/.bash_aliases

And optionally for fastboot too:

echo "alias fastboot='~/Android/platform-tools/fastboot'" >> ~/.bash_aliases && source ~/.bash_aliases

Updating is as simple as cd'ing to the Android directory and repeating the download and extract step again. Use adb version to check your currently installed version.

Answer 4

Improving on Organic Marble's answer, to only install the latest tools (not the whole sdk), use the platform-tool filter as below:

tools/android update sdk -t platform-tool --no-ui

Answer 5

I will add some stuff I learned earlier today.

I had two versions of adb installed at the same time due to a fascinating series of steps, Ubuntu 18.04; somehow an earlier version of the Android SDK created a symlink in /usr/bin/adb, so firing up React Native packager would pull from a conflicting adb and cause fairly difficult to interpret symptoms. I think it was because I installed remove+reinstalled Android Studio.

/home/<USER>/Android/Sdk/platform-tools is the default location your adb executable will be found in.

You can check its version by:

$ ./adb version

Here are the path variables you might find:

export ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/Android/Sdk
export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/tools
export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/tools/bin
export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools

Then you can make sure your system is using it with:

sudo ln -s /home/<USER>/Android/Sdk/platform-tools/adb /usr/bin/adb

That would allow you to use from a custom installation directory as well; replace /home/<USER>/Android/Sdk/platform-tools/adb with the path to your executable.