This guide will show you how to connect to a Fire TV or Fire TV Stick using Android Debug Bridge (ADB) from a Mac or Windows computer. Connecting to your Fire TV device via ADB allows you to remotely perform many different tasks, such as sideloading applications.
Table of Contents
How to install ADB and connect to the Fire TV from MacOS
1.) Download the SDK Platform-Tools for Mac from the Android developer website.
https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools Save the downloaded zip file to your desktop for this tutorial.
2.) Unzip the file by double clicking on the downloaded zip file. This will create a folder named platform-tools on your desktop.
3.) Open the Terminal app. The Terminal app can be found under Finder – Go – Applications – Utilities – Terminal. Alternatively you can do a Spotlight search for Terminal to open the app.
4.) Now change the current directory to the extracted folder on Desktop. Type the following into the Terminal app:
cd $HOME/Desktop/platform-tools/
5.) Enable ADB Debugging on the Fire TV.
Settings – Device – Developer Options – ADB debugging (ON).
Settings – Device – Developer Options – Apps from Unknown Sources (ON).
6.) Find your Fire TV IP Address from the Fire TV settings.
Settings – Device – About – Network
7.) Connect to the Fire TV via the following command in the Terminal app:
./adb connect 192.168.0.20
Note: Replace the IP Address with the address you found in step 6.
8.) Congratulations! You are now connected to the Fire TV via ADB from MacOS. Below are some example ADB commands you can run via the Terminal app.
ADB Examples
Install a APK file:
./adb install example.apk
The APK file you want to install must be located in the platform-tools folder in the above example. You can also specify the full path to the actual APK file if it is located elsewhere.