Setting up adb/fastboot

Last updated : 1/11/2023

Introduction

Here's yet another guide (among plenty of them) on setting up adb/fastboot on the computer for your Android needs.

Arch-based Linux distros

sudo pacman -S android-tools. That's it. By the way, Artix has absorbed android-tools from the discontinued universe repo to galaxy repo (which is Artix's equivalent to Arch's community repo) since September 2023.

Too short? How about this - you don't need to install any additional drivers just to get fastboot working. Other than that, there's not much explaining for this one.

Windows

More involved than Arch.

1. Download the latest platform-tools for Windows (sorry for goolag link)
2. Extract contents to somewhere accessible (such as C:\platform-tools; or C:\Windows if possible since it allows you access to adb without navigating to the platform-tools folder)
If you have extracted platform-tools to any folder outside PATH variable, you will have to either browse to that folder & opening command prompt / PowerShell there (which means you need to add files to platform-tools folder for flashing and/or booting stuff); or add the folder into PATH variable to be able to use it from any directory.

At this point, you can now use ADB on Windows using PowerShell / command prompt. However, fastboot doesn't work until the next step.


3. Download & install ADB driver from XDA-developers (forum link), skipping installation of its prebuilt ADB & fastboot binaries. Sure, you can try installing ADB drivers from Goolag, but let's be honest, that's the worst way to go, especially since the driver isn't an executable file, to say the least about Goolag even letting you gain access to the download link in the first place.
Alternatively, there's also ADB & Fastboot++; which also allows you to sidestep this entire installation guide, though I haven't used it yet. It uses ADB drivers from adb.clockworkmod.com, which is probably ancient at this point.

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