Most of the time I debug my Android apps by connecting my device to Android Studio with a USB cable because it is more reliable.

I was developing an Android app that communicates with USB devices and ran into a problem: the phone needed to be connected to a USB device for testing, but Android Studio normally requires the phone to be connected to my Mac via USB for debugging.

Android’s built-in wireless-debugging feature is only available on newer versions, so I couldn’t enable it on the device running Android 10. However, there is a simple workaround. Follow these steps:

  • Launch your app from Android Studio while connected via USB.
  • On your Android device, open Settings and search for “IP address”.
  • Note the device’s IP address.
  • In Android Studio, open the terminal and run: adb tcpip 5555
  • Then run: adb connect <ip_address_of_your_device>:5555

That’s it— you can now disconnect the USB cable and wirelessly debug your app on Android 10.

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