How to Fix FTDI Driver Issue on Mac and macOS

Arduino Usb Driver Mac Download
Arduino Usb Driver 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.

Arduino Usb Driver Mac Download

Latest macOS Sierra/High Sierra -compatible driver for devices using the CH340G, CH34G or CH34X chipset. This chipset is used in several Arduino-compatible clones and serial-to-USB cables. Do not install if you have the current macOS Mojave 10.14 or later. MacOS Mojave 10.14 (released in October 2018) includes a CH34x driver by Apple. Plug the ESP32 board to your computer. With your Arduino IDE open, follow these steps: 1. Select your Board in Tools Board menu (in my case it’s the DOIT ESP32 DEVKIT V1) 2. Select the Port (if you don’t see the COM Port in your Arduino IDE, you need to install the CP210x USB to UART Bridge VCP Drivers ): 3.

Click Install, once the driver installed it says “Driver Install Success”. Arduino CH340G Driver Installation. Restart your computer after installation (Important). NOTE: Some users notified that Arduino clones which use CH340G chip are not working properly on USB 3.0. Please comment if you face similar issue. Install USB COM Port Driver for LinkIt ONE development board for Mac. I believe the usb/ mfa141 is the Arduino USB driver I previously installed. Once it is installed reboot your computer. If you are on the latest Mac OS you must use Arduino 1.8.12 or higher due to 64bit application enforcement that Apple put in place.

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.

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.

Arduino Usb Driver Macos

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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