ADB doesn't recognize my Android Phone under Mac OS X 10.6.x

In numerous forums and even more in www.stackoverflow.com are posted unresolved questions regarding ADB's luck of device recognition under Mac OS X 10.6.x. After facing the same problem with my Nexus S I start experimenting.

I noticed that indeed ADB weren't listed my device with the ./adb devices command.

$ ./adb devices

Though, system profiler.app was successfully listing my phone, as other services such as tethering and fastboot ( fastboot:Yes I tried Everything..!! ). Moreover, reinstalls and restarts of adb server was also a drop to space. So that made me curious regarding this as the same phone was working under Linux and Windows systems and also tethering was a succes under Mac OS X.

The answer was simple, the service of tethering that was running in my Mac was blocking ADB server to communicate with the device, so the listing was a failure. 

So in simple steps, before you plug-in your device for debugging purposes you should first unload the EasyTetherUSBEthernet service. You may achieve that by submitting this command to your terminal:

$ sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/EasyTetherUSBEthernet.kext

Then plug-in your device and then submit the known-unknow command, by first having changed your directory to the android-sdk/tools folder

$ ./adb devices

or just

$ adb devices

in case you have set the android-sdk to you environment profile. If you didn't then you should! Just under your Home directory locate the .bash_profile file and at the PATH variable add the android-sdk/tools directory.

Furthermore, in case you wish to reload the EasyTetherUSBEthernet service just submit this:

 $ sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/EasyTetherUSBEthernet.kext 

And in any case wanting to remove the EasyTetherUSBEthernet submit ( witch I don't Recommend)

$ sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/EasyTetherUSBEthernet.kext

$ sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/EasyTetherUSBEthernet.kext

 

 

 

That's all folks, I hope you enjoy it as much it helped you. :)

Thanks for reading it!