You don’t need to install the entire android development environment to get the adb now. Google collectively refers to ADB, fastboot, and a few other utilities as the Platform Tools package and has provided them separately now. This post is assuming you don’t have android sdk or android studio installed.
Install adb on MacOSX using Homebrew
This is the easiest way and will provide automatic updates.
# Install homebrew
ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
# Install adb
brew install android-platform-tools
# run
adb devicesInstall adb manually
- Download your OS-specific zip of platform tools from here.
- Extract the contents of the .zip file to a folder you can find later.
- Navigate to the extracted folder using your terminal, and there you will find the adb command.
- Run the command normally once you’re into the extracted folder-
adb devices
References
Installing ADB on MAC OS X - StackOverflow
SDK Platform Tools Download - Android Studio
Install Android’s ADB and Fastboot Tools on Any OS - Lifehacker