Android adb (OSX Lion) does not recognize Galaxy Nexus, Jelly Bean

Question

I've been developing my first android apps on Eclipse installed on OSX Lion. I would like to use my Jelly Beans Galaxy Nexus for debugging, but the Android Device Bridge (adb) can't find the device:

./adb devices
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
List of devices attached 

• The phone is in debugging mode.
• The phone is recognizable as a camera (PTP), but not as a media device (MTP). ADB does not work regardless of PTP\MTP setting.
• I have restarted noth the phone and the mac
• Following this advice, I've installed Android File Transfer. The ATF recognizes the device, but no luck with the ADB.

Any ideas?

Addendum: I have reported a bug for this. Workarounds are still most welcome!

Sep 5 13:28 UTC - Workaround #1: Dropbox: I've moved the OSX Eclipse workspace to Dropbox and installed Dropbox on the device. The APK is written to bin/, and I re-install it from the Dropbox app after each successful build.

Answer 1

I'm answering this because my boss just had the exact same issue with his Galaxy Nexus, and we finally fixed it yesterday. He had an application, "EasyTether" that was snagging his connection to ADB and it couldn't be used anywhere else. Is it possible that you've setup this application, or a similar one that might be using ADB for you? If "Android File Transfer" works (it was working in parallel with EasyTether for my boss), then your connection is active, so as long as "USB Debugging" is enabled in your settings, you should be seeing a connection. Here's a quick how-to in the event that you do have "easytether"

BEFORE you plug your phone in run the following in terminal

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

If that fixes the issue, and you want to remove easytether altogether, you can us the rm command with the -rf flags to keep it from happening again...

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

Answer 2

You can use adb over wifi.

See this post to do it yourself.

or there are quite a lot of apps on google play. But these need root access

Answer 3

1. Try taking the usb stick out of the phone and put it back
2. Try taking it out of the mac and put it back
3. Try to put the stick in another port
4. Try to wriggle the stick so you are sure it is connected.

There is a long discussion with possible solutions here: Can't find android device using "adb devices" command