Download Android SDK Platform Tools (Windows, Mac & Linux)

Android SDK Platform Tools download is now available as a zip file directly from Google. Just download the latest SDK platform-tools zip containing ADB and Fastboot binaries for Windows, Mac, and Linux from below and unzip it. You can then be able to execute ADB and Fastboot commands to install APK, reboot your Android into the bootloader mode and flash stock ROM and recovery images using your Windows, Mac or Linux or Ubuntu computer.

The Android SDK and Android Studio are tools for developers only and they are used for Android application development purposes. However, if you are just a nerd who messes around your phone for smaller jobs like unlocking the bootloader, flashing boot or recovery image or the full factory images occasionally, downloading the full Android SDK or Studio is no more necessary. You can now download the latest ADB and Fastboot tool or Android SDK Platform-Tools zip file depending on your computer’s OS separately.

Platform-Tools is a component of the Android SDK and it includes different tools, such as ADB, fastboot, and systray. If you have ever wanted to download ADB and Fastboot without having to download the whole of Android Studio or SDK, Google has finally made those binaries available officially for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Thus you can now download the latest ADB and Fastboot files from Google Developer site.

Before this new development, users had to download Android SDK or Studio, which are a 400MB to 1.6GB download, and rely on 3rd-party sources to grab the ADB and Fastboot drivers. You must be familiar with Minimal ADB and Fastboot executable that we needed to install to get the Android SDK Platform Tools.

In many cases, the 3rd-party downloads contain malicious stuff like Trojans. Furthermore, to get the latest SDK platform tools, we had to keep an eye on the new releases. Sometimes the latest version of such executable tools installs the outdated ADB and Fastboot binaries. It’s time now to get rid of the middlemen and get the latest tools straight from Google.

Why download a giant package of junk if you need just a small chunk? The size of the official Platform Tools is less than 4MB.

Download Android SDK Platform Tools

SDK Platform Tools for Windows

ADB Platform Tools for MacOS

SDK or ADB Platform Tools for Linux and Ubuntu

You can also visit the official page and take a look at the release note. If you want to use your Android phone like a PC for executing ADB and Fastboot commands, please read out guide on the topic.

Steps to Use and Execute ADB Commands

Having downloaded the latest SDK Platform-Tools.zip file, just extract it on your desktop. Open the extracted folder, and launch a command window inside the “platform-tools” folder and execute the desired ADB and Fastboot commands.

There are two ways to open the command window from a folder window. The easiest and quickest way to launch the command or cmd prompt window from the platform-tools folder window is to type “cmd” in the window address bar and hit the Enter key.

Launch command window in the platform-tools folder

You can also open a command prompt on Windows as follows. Pace the mouse pointer at any empty space inside the folder, then press Shift key+ Right-click on the mouse and select “Open command window here” or “Open PowerShell window here” (on Windows 10) option.

Android SDK Platform Tools – Windows

Having launched the CMD window, you can execute ADB or Fastboot commands.

Don’t forget to authorize ADB and allow USB debugging on your Android device when prompted. Also, to be able to use ADB and Fastboot commands, you must enable USB debugging on your device.

Allow USB Debugging

For instance, if you want to check the connection between your Android device and computer, you can try the following command:

‘adb devices’ command

Similarly, you can reboot your Android device into the Bootloader mode using “adb reboot bootloader” command and even install an APK app. Do not forget to check out the full list of ADB and Fastboot commands.

Windows 10 SDK

The Windows 10 SDK (10.0.19041.0) for Windows 10, version 2004 provides the latest headers, libraries, metadata, and tools for building Windows 10 apps.

Use this SDK to build Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and Win32 applications for Windows 10, version 20H2 and previous Windows releases.

Windows 10, version 20H2 is a scoped set of features for select performance improvements and quality enhancements. Developers should be aware of this release, but no action is necessary at this time.

A new Windows SDK will not be issued to accompany this version of Windows because this release doesn’t introduce new APIs. That means there’s no need to modify your project files or target a new version of Windows, and you should continue to use the Windows 10 SDK for Windows 10, version 2004. When setting the target version for your Windows app, Windows 10 build 19041 is still the most recent target version.

Getting started

You can get the Windows 10 SDK in two ways: install it from this page by selecting the download link or by selecting “Windows 10 SDK (10.0.19041.0)” in the optional components of the Visual Studio 2019 Installer.

Before you install this SDK:

System requirements

The Windows SDK has the following minimum system requirements:

Supported operating systems

• Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app development
  • Windows 10 version 1507 or higher: Home, Professional, Education, and Enterprise (LTSB and S are not supported)
  • Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2012 R2 (Command line only)

• Win32 app development
  • Windows 10 version 1507 or higher
  • Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, and Windows Server 2012 R2 (Command line only)
  • Windows 8.1
  • Windows 7 SP1

(Not all tools are supported on earlier operating systems)

Hardware requirements

• 1.6 GHz or faster processor
• 1 GB of RAM
• 4 GB of available hard disk space

Additional SDK requirements

Installation on Windows 8.1 and earlier operating systems requires KB2999226. To install through Windows Update, make sure you install the latest recommended updates and patches from Microsoft Update before you install the Windows SDK.

What’s new

The Windows 10 SDK for Windows 10, version 2004 offers exciting new APIs and updated tools for developing your Windows applications. Learn more about the new features in Windows 10, version 2004.

To see the new APIs introduced with Windows 10, version 2004, see: What’s new in Windows 10 for developers, build 19041.

Removal of api-ms-win-net-isolation-l1-1-0.lib

In this release api-ms-win-net-isolation-l1-1-0.lib has been removed from the Windows SDK. Apps that were linking against api-ms-win-net-isolation-l1-1-0.lib can switch t OneCoreUAP.lib as a replacement.

Removal of irprops.lib

In this release irprops.lib has been removed from the Windows SDK. Apps that were linking against irprops.lib can switch to bthprops.lib as a drop-in replacement.

Removal of wuapicommon.h and wuapicommon.idl

In this release we have moved ENUM tagServerSelection from wuapicommon.h to wupai.h and removed the header. If you would like to use the ENUM tagServerSelection, you will need to include wuapi.h or wuapi.idl.

Windows 10 WinRT API Pack

The Windows 10 WinRT API Pack lets you add the latest Windows Runtime APIs support to your .NET Framework 4.5+ and .NET Core 3.0+ libraries and apps. To access the Windows 10 WinRT API Pack, see the Microsoft.Windows.SDK.Contracts nuget package.

Universal C Runtime (UCRT)

The printf family of functions now conforms with the IEEE 754 rounding rules when printing exactly representable floating-point numbers and will honor the rounding mode requested via calls to fesetround. Legacy behavior is available when linking with legacy_stdio_float_rounding.obj.

Tools

Windows App Certification Kit

In this release of the Windows SDK, several new APIs were added to the Supported APIs list in the App Certification Kit and Windows Store. If there are APIs in the supported list that appear greyed out or disabled in Visual Studio, you can make a small change to your source file, to access them. For more details, see this known issue.

In addition to adding APIs, the following changes have been made to the tests:

Updated tests:

• ValidateContentUriRules will be informational only. Test failures will be presented as warnings.

Removed tests

• WebView WinRT access test for web app
• PackageSizeCheck test for UWP apps
• SupportedApi test for Desktop Bridge apps
• AppContainerCheck test from BinScope for UWP apps
• ServiceWorker check for all app types

New tests

• High-DPI test. A new test for Desktop Bridge apps checks if the app uses DPI aware feature and warns if not specified. This test will encourage you to make your app per-monitor DPI aware. For details on DPI see High DPI Desktop Application Development on Windows.

Message Compiler (mc.exe)

Updates include:

• Now detects the Unicode byte order mark (BOM) in .mc files. If the .mc file starts with a UTF-8 BOM, it will be read as a UTF-8 file. Otherwise, if it starts with a UTF-16LE BOM, it will be read as a UTF-16LE file. If the -u parameter was specified, it will be read as a UTF-16LE file. Otherwise, it will be read using the current code page (CP_ACP).
• Now avoids one-definition-rule (ODR) problems in MC-generated C/C++ ETW helpers caused by conflicting configuration macros (e.g. when two .cpp files with conflicting definitions of MCGEN_EVENTWRITETRANSFER are linked into the same binary, the MC-generated ETW helpers will now respect the definition of MCGEN_EVENTWRITETRANSFER in each .cpp file instead of arbitrarily picking one or the other).

Windows Trace Preprocessor (tracewpp.exe)

Updates include:

• Now supports Unicode input (.ini, .tpl, and source code) files. Input files starting with a UTF-8 or UTF-16 byte order mark (BOM) will be read as Unicode. Input files that do not start with a BOM will be read using the current code page (CP_ACP). For backwards-compatibility, if the -UnicodeIgnore command-line parameter is specified, files starting with a UTF-16 BOM will be treated as empty.
• Now supports Unicode output (.tmh) files. By default, output files will be encoded using the current code page (CP_ACP). Use command-line parameters -cp:UTF-8 or -cp:UTF-16 to generate Unicode output files.
• Behavior change: tracewpp now converts all input text to Unicode, performs processing in Unicode, and converts output text to the specified output encoding. Earlier versions of tracewpp avoided Unicode conversions and performed text processing assuming a single-byte character set. This may lead to behavior changes in cases where the input files do not conform to the current code page. In cases where this is a problem, consider converting the input files to UTF-8 (with BOM) and/or using the -cp:UTF-8 command-line parameter to avoid encoding ambiguity.

TraceLoggingProvider.h

Updates include:

• Now avoids one-definition-rule (ODR) problems caused by conflicting configuration macros (e.g. when two .cpp files with conflicting definitions of TLG_EVENT_WRITE_TRANSFER are linked into the same binary, the TraceLoggingProvider.h helpers will now respect the definition of TLG_EVENT_WRITE_TRANSFER in each .cpp file instead of arbitrarily picking one or the other).
• In C++ code, the TraceLoggingWrite macro has been updated to enable better code sharing between similar events using variadic templates.

Signing your apps with Device Guard Signing

We are making it easier for you to sign your app. Device Guard signing is a Device Guard feature that is available in Microsoft Store for Business and Education. Signing allows enterprises to guarantee every app comes from a trusted source. Our goal is to make signing your MSIX package easier. See the documentation about Device Guard Signing.

Samples

Windows 10 app samples are now available through GitHub. You can browse the code on GitHub, clone a personal copy of the repository from Git, or download a zipped archive of all the samples. We welcome feedback, so feel free to open an issue within the repository if you have a problem or question. These samples are designed to run on desktop, mobile, and future devices that support the Universal Windows Platform (UWP).

Previous SDK versions

Previously released SDKs and emulators, including update details, can be found on the archive page.

API Light Up

When you use new APIs, consider writing your app to be adaptive so that it runs correctly on the widest array of Windows 10 devices. An adapative app «lights up» with new features wherever the devices and Windows version supports them, but otherwise offers only the functionality available on the detected platform version. For implementation details, see the Version adaptive code article.

Release notes & Known Issues

The Windows 10 SDK, Version 2004 SDK servicing update (released 12/16/2020) contains the following fixes. If you encounter these issues, we recommend that you update your version of the SDK as soon as possible to avoid them:

• Resolved unpredictable and hard to diagnose crashes when linking both umbrella libraries and native OS libraries (for example, onecoreuap.lib and kernel32.lib)
• Resolved issue that prevented AppVerifier from working
• Resolved issue that caused WACK to fail with “Task failed to enable HighVersionLie”

For known issues, see the winapi-sdk Q&A.

For new developer feature requests, submit through the Feedback Hub app under the category “Developer Platform/API.”

More resources

Downloads and tools

Get the latest editions of Visual Studio and Windows 10 development tools.

SDK archive

Find previous releases of the Window SDK and other tools.

Windows blog

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Windows lifecycle fact sheet

Find the key dates for Windows release updates and end of support.