How to use your android's data connection through USB on a Mac.

08 September 2013,

I wanted to use the data connection in Android phone on a Macbook.
Why? because I can have a solid internet connection from my phone data connection to my laptop with out needing a dongle. One data connection, 2 devices.

The operating systems: in android device - Ice cream sandwich(ICS) and in Mac - Mac OS X 10.7.2.

When I started my android journey in 2010 along side Fusion Smart Village, having a Google nexus one (on Ginger Bread) was the coolest thing :). I could simply enable the wifi hotspot in Ginger Bread OS and use the data connection as a wifi hotspot. And that was how the rural communities also used the smart phone as a shared device. Because of that, the smartphone was tagged by community as a "mobile telecentre". At that time I never tried the USB tethering option, which is, you simply connect android phone with USB cable to your computer. So now I wanted to try it with the new OS: ICS.

For simplicity, below is a technical explanation of tethering. There are 3 types of tethering. According to wikipedia,

"Tethering refers to connecting one device to another. In the context of mobile phones or Internet tablets, tethering allows sharing the Internet connection of the phone or tablet with other devices such as laptops. Connection of the phone or tablet with other devices can be done over wireless LAN (Wi-Fi), over Bluetooth or by physical connection using a cable, for example through USB.

If tethering is done over Wi-Fi, the feature may be branded as a Mobile Hotspot. The Internet-connected mobile device can thus act as a portable wireless access point and router for devices connected to it."

I tried about 6 different apps/drivers until I could yell " Got it!". It took about 4 hours.
Some of the apps needed installation from, both phone and laptop end. But would give error messages at the very last step.

The winner, the absolute beauty was " HoRNDIS". Very simple. I just downloaded a simple driver package, and installed. Then I connected the phone through USB cable, it automatically picks the connection. That's it ! . So go to their page here, and avoid wasting few good hours of your time. But be notified the solution works, if only you have Mac OS 10.6.8 (snow leopard) to 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion)

Useful Links:

The other notable apps I used can be found from this Mashable article.  But in my pursuit and also noted in many tech forums, most of them works fine for Windows, but not for Mac.
The most popular one is PdaNet, but that gives an error message on the last step: "error code "e00002c5".

So happy android tethering on Mac !. This is just my experience explained. There are many who try this.

Has it worked for you? If you are one using/trying, please drop a comment below.

Thanks Udara and Gopi for technical guidance earlier on ICS.

Pic: courtesy