For many developers, the full Android Studio IDE is more than they need—especially for those working in lightweight environments, setting up CI/CD pipelines, or using alternative editors like VS Code. In these cases, the is the preferred way to get the essential command-line utilities without the overhead of a multi-gigabyte IDE. 1. Where to Find Official Android SDK ZIP Files
Set this to your SDK root (e.g., C:\AndroidSDK ).
To use the tools from any terminal, add the following to your system's PATH: android sdk tools download zip
Once the ZIP is set up, use the sdkmanager to install the actual Android versions (APIs) and build tools you need. SDK Platform Tools release notes | Android Studio
Add %ANDROID_HOME%\cmdline-tools\latest\bin and %ANDROID_HOME%\platform-tools . 3. Installing SDK Components via Command Line For many developers, the full Android Studio IDE
Additionally, if you only need the debugging tools (ADB and Fastboot), you can download the much smaller directly: SDK Platform-Tools for Windows SDK Platform-Tools for Mac SDK Platform-Tools for Linux 2. Step-by-Step Installation Guide
.../android-sdk/cmdline-tools/latest/bin/sdkmanager . Step 3: Configure Environment Variables Where to Find Official Android SDK ZIP Files
Create a permanent directory for your SDK, such as C:\AndroidSDK (Windows) or ~/android-sdk (Linux/macOS). Step 2: Extract and Structure Extract the commandlinetools-*.zip into your new SDK root.
Google provides standalone versions of its tools on the official Android Studio Download page . You must scroll to the bottom of the page to find the section. Current Direct Download Links (Latest) As of May 2026, the primary ZIP packages are: Windows: commandlinetools-win-14742923_latest.zip macOS: commandlinetools-mac-14742923_latest.zip Linux: commandlinetools-linux-14742923_latest.zip
Inside your SDK root, create a subfolder named cmdline-tools . Move the extracted tools folder into cmdline-tools and rename that folder to latest .