Android SDK Manager won't update: connection to https://dl-ssl.google.com refused

Question

This is the same problem as a number of other have reported, e.g.

Failed to fetch URL https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/repository/addons_list-1.xml, reason: Connect

Answer 1

The solution for me on my Mac was to temporarily disable/turn off Little Snitch. The Snitch was blocking my access to dl-ssl.google.com and I didn't know it because I had the Snitch set to 'silent' mode, and therefore I was unaware it was blocking the SDK Manager.