Android studio on Mac cannot detect connected USB phone

Question

Constant issue with being able to connect an Android device via USB to Android Studio running on a Mac.

Tried numerous things like:

• Switching USB debugging mode on Android to MTP or PTP
• Restarting the Android devices and Android Studio and/or Mac

• trying adb kill-serverand then adb devices, which usually resulted in:

  List of devices attached

  daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037

  adb E 655 23135 usb_osx.cpp:327] Could not open interface: e00002c5

  adb E 655 23135 usb_osx.cpp:289] Could not find device interface

  daemon started successfully

  But not actually finding the connected device.

Answer 1

I just wanted to write it down in case someone else comes across this issue.
It took me more than a couple of days to solve this while I was banging my head trying to understand what seems to be the problem.

Note: For me it was a cable issue.

I have Nexus6P with 2 original cables:

1. Type-C to Type-C
2. Short Type-C to regular USB

The problem was I was trying to hook the cable 1 directly from the Nexus to the Mac Pro (which didn't work since I think the Mac has a thunderbolt protocol on the Type-C inputs)

Then I tried a Type-C to regular USB cable with an adapter from to make it Type-C to Type-C (bear in mind this wasn't the original cable I got with my phone)

Only when I used the original short cable (cable 2) with an adapter it worked.
Although the non-original cable I used was a high-end cable - it still didn't work

Hope it helps other people who struggle with this

Answer 2

There are some great responses that worked for others, like this one or this one which seemed to work for others.

In my case, the issue was Tizen Studio (I was working on a watch app for Samsung Gear). Through this poster's research, found that the adb error could not open interface: e00002c5 implies that the usb device is already in use by some other driver.

So it seems Tizen Studio takes up the usb driver resource even though it is not using it. Quitting the application will automatically allow adb devices to list your device and run the project on it.

Hope this helps other lost souls.