The pre-requisite step in any guide to sideloading an OTA or flashing a factory image is installing the Android Device Bridge. Previously, the official way to get adb or fastboot was by downloading the entire set of Android Studio development tools. Google (spotted via Android Police) now conveniently provides a direct way to just download the platform-tools.
Okay, this probably isn’t going to drastically change the lives of either casual users of Android or developers on the platform, but I still found it to be cool. There’s a new Chrome app on the block called Vysor, and it offers a super simple way to view and control an Android device from a desktop computer.
Last week Google released the latest version of Android Wear, 5.0.1 Lollipop. The latest update entails many enhancements and refinements, but most notable is the long awaited official watch face API support and new notification, brightness, and alert settings. If you’re anxious to try out the new features of Android Wear’s latest (whether it be Lollipop or some future release), but haven’t received the OTA update yet, you can try to manually install it with ADB tools.
Modifying your Android device usually requires you to have ADB tools installed. Without it, you wouldn’t have access to developer commands which are included in most of our recent guides. This quick guide will show you how to install and configure Google’s ADB tools software on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer in minutes.