How to Fix FTDI Driver Issue on Mac and macOS
Ongoing macOS FTDI driver issues plague many users connecting the Arduino IDE to boards that use an FTDI chip. Since our boards use an FTDI chip for USB-to-serial communication, we have witnessed some of these issues when working with our boards using Mac and macOS.
The symptoms we have observed generally include the spontaneous loss of the USB serial port connection to the board or loss of the port after disconnecting and then reconnecting the board from the USB programming cable.
Rebooting the system can temporarily restore the port, but the problem eventually comes back. Since we’ve seen this issue pop up internally and with many customers, we decided to share what solution has been working for us so far.
Introducing the Apple AppleUSBFTDI kernel driver. With the release of OS X Mavericks, the AppleUSBFTDI kernel driver is included. This driver will affect existing applications that under OS X 10.8 and earlier, use the Future Technology Devices International (FTDI) D2XX libraries to communicate with hardware devices that are based on the FTDI USB-to-serial chipset. FTDI Chip FT232R Driver 2.1.0 Mac OS X was collected from FTDI Chip official site for FTDI Chip Mobile Drive. That's probably because I deleted the dratted. Make sure you select the proper one for your OS. Download the FTDI Virtual COM Port VCP drivers from the website listed above.
The exact cause of this problem is not certain, but it seems to be related to Apple’s support, or lack thereof, for FTDI drivers in the operating system. Earlier versions of Mac OS X did not support FTDI drivers, so users would have to install third-party FTDI drivers. Somewhere around the release of macOS 10.12 Sierra (and maybe earlier), native support for FTDI drivers was included.
So, if you have followed an upgrade path from an older version of the OS without native FTDI support to a new version that has it, there can be contention between the native and third-party drivers. This potentially leads to the mysterious port disappearance issue.
We have found uninstalling the third-party drivers to be a solution. The instructions below have seemed to work for anyone here at Alorium Technology that was observing the FTDI issues.
Instructions
- To uninstall FTDI drivers you must be logged on to your computer as a root user. Follow Apple’s directions if this needs to be enabled on your computer.
- Be careful! By enabling root, you have privileges to change and delete files that are required by your computer.
- Follow steps 4.1 and 4.2 in FTDI Chip’s “FTDI Driver Installation Guide” to uninstall all third-party drivers on your computer.
- Disable root on your computer. Follow Apple’s directions below.
- Reboot your system
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Note: if you already have a working Arduino environment, you can safely skip this step.
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Windows XP
These instructions are mainly for Windows XP see below other versions of Windows.
Step 1:
Just plug your Arduino into the USB port with the right cable. This balloon should appear.
Step 2:
Choose the option that you’ll select the driver yourself. We don’t want to wait for Windows to find it.
Step 3:
Click “Next”.
Step 4:
Click on “Browse”
Step 5:
Search for the drivers in the Ultimaker directory (or within the Arduino files) you’ve just extracted from the downloaded zip. When the OK button becomes active, press to continue!
Step 6:
Then, choose next.
Step 7:
Press “Continue Anyway”.
Step 8:
Press “Finish”.
That’s it!
Great work! Now you can start using your AmbiLED HD or your Arduino.
If you ran into any problems, please make a comment at the bottom part of this page! |
Windows 7
Click the start menu, and start typing “Device”. The following entries will show up:
![Ftdi Ftdi](/uploads/1/1/9/8/119846030/307406929.jpg)
After clicking on “Device Manager”, you will see this screen:
If you don’t see your FTDI USB device, please make sure it was plugged in.
Right-click the FTDI device and choose “Update driver software…”
Choose that you’ll browse for the driver yourself:
Find the folder of AmbiLED HD that you’ve downloaded:
Choose the folder “FTDI USB Drivers” and click OK, then click “Next” in the Wizard.
Choose “Install”. This should be the final step in the wizard. Close the wizard and wait for a balloon to appear at the bottom right. This balloon will tell you that the driver can be used.
Congratulations: That’s it!
If you ran into any problems, please make a comment at the bottom part of this page! |
Windows 8 and 8.1
No driver required for most of Win8 installations. If you have any problem with your FTDI com port, simply google it. FTDI is a well known USB to Serial hardware and have a lot of solution for problems.
For example if you have driver signature problem, solution here.
For example if you have driver signature problem, solution here.
Sparkfun Ftdi
Mac OS X
Make sure you’ve downloaded the DMG of ReplicatorG, it contains the driver you need. When you open it, you should see the following files:
Surprise… the ‘Drivers’ folder is where you’ll find the drivers. Open it to reveal the following contents:
Now, open the disk image with the drivers. The opened folder looks like this:
For Mac OS X Tiger (10.4), Leopard (10.5) and Snow Leopard (10.6), open the second installation package, called “FTDIUSBSerialDriver_10_4_10_5_10_6.mpkg”.
Click Continue. You’ll see the change to this version of the driver.
Click Continue, again.
Click Install to the default. Enter your (administrative) account login to authorize the installation.
This should take a minute or two until it shows that you’re done!
This document also explains how to install the driver in a step-by-step process:
If you ran into any problems, please make a comment at the bottom part of this page! |
Linux
Ubuntu or other Debian based systems
Mac Os Ftdi Driver
The FTDI Driver is included with Ubuntu/Debian. After plugging in the USB cable, you can find your device under /dev/ttyUSB0 (and ttyUSB1, ttyUSB2, etc, if you have more) or /dev/ttyACM0.
Regular users on your ubuntu system may not have permission to write to the ttyUSB or ttyACM device. For example, Pronterface may complain “SerialException: could not open port /dev/ttyACM0″. In this case, change permissions for regular users like so:
sudo chmod 666 /dev/ttyACM0
Ftdi Driver For Mac Catalina
![Ftdi Drivers For Mac Ftdi Drivers For Mac](/uploads/1/1/9/8/119846030/939131789.png)
If you ran into any problems, please make a comment at the bottom part of this page! |
Remove Ftdi Drivers
Raspberry PI
You are lucky, there is no extra driver for standard Pi packages. They are coming with FTDI drivers.
Ftdi Driver For Mac
If you ran into any problems, please make a comment at the bottom part of this page! |