How to solve this adb server version doesn't match this client error in android?

I have the same issue when running adb devices command.

adb devices
List of devices attached
adb server version (36) doesn't match this client (40); killing...
* daemon started successfully
2322dc3d    device

I ran command which adbwhich gave me the location of the adb that the previous command was using, in my case output was:

which adb
/usr/bin/adb

Then i ran whereis adb command which gave me the location of adb's:

whereis adb
adb: /usr/bin/adb /home/arefin/Android/Sdk/platform-tools/adb 
/usr/share/man/man1/adb.1.gz

I get rid of this problem by moving the adb from /usr/bin directory with mv command: (meaning this is of no use thus instead of deleting just put in desktop),

/usr/bin$ `sudo mv adb /home/arefin/Desktop/`

After this i executed this command adb kill-server then ran adb devices. I found everything is fine this time.

My Android development related path in in $HOME/.profile file is, as below:

export ANDROID_HOME=/home/arefin/Android/Sdk
export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools
export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/tools
export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/emulator
export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin

When encountered this error in Linux,I deleted the adb file in my

/usr/bin/

and replaced with one which located in path (usually in home path)

~/Android/Sdk/platform-tools/

and it worked.

As pointed out in previous answers, this is due to having multiple adb versions installed in your system. Probably one from the android-sdk-platform-tools installed via apt and other from Android Sdk itself (which is usually newer version).

The simplest way to solve this in Ubuntu (or Ubuntu-based OS's) is to add this line at the end of ~/.bashrc file:

alias adb='~/Android/Sdk/platform-tools/adb' 
#Change path according to your Android Sdk installation directory

And then reopen terminal for changes to reflect.

This avoids the need to mess with system files as well.

Probably you have two versions of adb in two different locations in your system. The running server version is 39 and the adb client version is 40. You can resolve this by keeping only one adb in your PC. You can figure it out as shown below-

In Linux below command gives you adb location if adb binary is added to path.

which adb

if adb is not added to path and still you are getting this error then search for adb using below command.

locate adb

if your adb client is other than above location, you may add newest version to above path and delete the old adb version.

If you are using windows, you figure it out the two adb locations and keep only at single place.

I know this is a little old, but if you have this problem and you have Vysor installed, then you can resolve it by looking in the Vysor application folder for the adb.exe (and Adb*.dll files) and replacing them from your Android SDK folder. I'm on a Windows machine and the relevant paths for me were:

• Vysor
  • C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Vysor\crx\gidgenkbbabolejbgbpnhbimgjbffefm\app-2.1.7.crx-unpacked\native\win32*
  • (I'm guessing the path will vary according to the version, etc, but this will hopefully help figure it out.)
• APK
  • C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk\platform-tools

On my machine, the relevant files were:

• adb.exe,
• AdbWinApi.dll,
• AdbWinUsbApi.dll

After this, you will need to kill the existing ADB task as described in the other answers to this post.

Solved by

Open terminal in Android studio

adb kill-server

sudo cp ~/Android/Sdk/platform-tools/adb /usr/bin/adb

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/adb

adb start-server

Run

tasklist | findstr adb

then kill the duplicate process

TASKKILL /PID "PID_NUMBER" /f

Encountered this problem myself, none of the solutions online worked for me. did this by chance and it solved my problem!

I'm using Android Studio on a Macbook Pro.

first I tried to install adb from brew:

brew cask install android-platform-tools

then I uninstalled it:

brew cask uninstall android-platform-tools

After the last line adb didn't work in terminal but did work in Android Studio immediately! =D

posted so it may help someone else - good luck!

For ubuntu (more precise - kubuntu) i had the similar problem.

The problem was in android-studio, to fix it you need to do these steps:

1. Go to SDK-Manager
2. In SDK-Manager click the SDK Tools menu.
3. Uncheck "Android SDK Command-line Tools (latest)"

I had the same issue connecting to my SFTP Server app and could solve it as follows:

The error was caused (in my case, Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS) by conflicting adb installations. One Installation coming with AndroidStudio (IntelliJ) located in .../Sdk/platform-tools and one coming with the package manager installation apt install located in the standard directory for executables /usr/bin. The installation location for AndroidStudio (IntelliJ) can be found in the AndroidStudio (IntelliJ) Menu: Tools → Android → SDK Manager: Android SDK Location. And the installation location related to the package manager can be found invoking the command which adb.

And the solution to this problem is to uninstall one of them.

Depending on your use case, if you’re most of the time working with AndroidStudio (IntelliJ) (and this version is up to date), then remove the (outdated) version installed with the package manager as follows.

To uninstall first find out which packages relates to /usr/bin/adb with the following command: dpkg -S /usr/bin/adb.

And then call apt autoremove adb to uninstall the adb package and all its dependencies.

And last but not least in order to still being able to call adb from the command line update the PATH variable in “/etc/profile”, if it should be accessible for all users, or ~/.bash_profile or ~/.profile (whichever exists) if it should only be accessible for the current user and append the path “.../Sdk/platform-tools” (that you looked up above) at the end. And then reboot or log-out & log-in for the new path to get applied.

restarting your system, would also work for you.

I have faced the following error and what worked in my case was just to restart the system.

could not read ok from ADB Server
* failed to start daemon
error: cannot connect to daemon code here
adb.exe: failed to check server version: cannot connect to daemon

I had a similar error. Two different adb versions were conflicting with each other which caused it to keep restarting.

Run this command in terminal => where adb.exe

This will show you where the different adb files are. You can look at the file property date to see which is the latest one. Then copy the latest one and use it to overwrite/replace the older one(s). This will make both adb versions be the same and prevent a conflict.

This generally happens when there are two adb paths are available. Uninstall one will help

--> npm uninstall adb

This worked in my case.

None of the other solutions worked for me - Windows/WSL2-Ubuntu

The error is misleading but for me it was cos the adb port 5037 was in use.

Solution: find and kill the process using port 5037

Windows: netstat -aon | findstr 5037 and Stop-Process -Id <id-from-netstat>

WSL will attempt to connect to Windows port 5037

In my case wsl Ubuntu has different adb --version than Windows, I don't have to keep my Android Studio latest(since this might not your choice and do not guarantee same version as apt) or try with $PATH(wsl run Windows exe is not make sense).

The solution is simple, I download both Linux and Windows SDK Platform-Tools from official site which guarantee same version, then invoke relevant adb on each platform.

In ubuntu

1. delete the adb

   -> usr/bin 
   -> (delete command) sudo rm -rf /usr/bin/adb
   

2. Android/Sdk/platform-tools/adb

   -> copy this folderpath.
   

3. paste into

   ->usr/bin
   ->(paste command) sudo ln -s /home/yourfile/Android/Sdk/platform-tools/adb /usr/bin
   

In my case I'd installed "AirDroid" on my windows machine and it runs "AirDroid_adb.exe", I had to kill that to get things to work. I have reported that they are using an old version of adb and they will hopefully fix it.

A Working Simple Answer for Windows:

• make sure you have the sideload file (whatever.bin) in a sub directory of your adb executable.

• make sure your adb executable folder, and sub directories are in PATH (look up DOS commands for PATH in Windows)

• open a command prompt in the same directory as the sideload file

• enter your command for example:

  adb sideload mynewrom-5.4.3.2.1.bin
  

(Your device needs to be in recovery - sideload state before you send)