Launch the Settings application on your phone.

Tap the About Phone option generally near the bottom of the list (this is hidden behind the “System” option in Google’s latest Android Oreo version).

Then tap the Build Number option 7 times to enable Developer Mode. You will see a toast message when it is done.

Now go back to the main Settings screen and you should see a new Developer Options menu you can access.

Go in there and enable the USB Debugging mode option.

Download the ADB ZIP file for Windows

Extract the contents of this ZIP file into an easily accessible folder (such as C:\adb)

Open Windows explorer and browse to where you extracted the contents of this ZIP file

Then open up a Command Prompt from the same directory as this ADB binary. This can be done by holding Shift and Right-clicking within the folder then click the “open command prompt here” option. (Some Windows 10 users may see “PowerShell” instead of “command prompt”.)

Connect your smartphone or tablet to your computer with a USB cable. Change the USB mode to “file transfer (MTP)” mode. Some OEMs may or may not require this, but it’s best to just leave it in this mode for general compatibility.

In the Command Prompt window, enter the following command to launch the ADB daemon: adb devices

On your phone’s screen, you should see a prompt to allow or deny USB Debugging access. Naturally, you will want to grant USB Debugging access when prompted (and tap the always allow check box if you never want to see that prompt again).

Finally, re-enter the command from step #6. If everything was successful, you should now see your device’s serial number in the command prompt. Yay! You can now run any ADB command on your device! Now go forth and start modding your phone by following our extensive list of tutorials!