HoRNDIS: USB tethering driver for Mac OS X

joshua_ · Nov 14, 2012

Hi!

I spent the last week or so working on a project that I call HoRNDIS (pronounce: "horrendous") -- a Mac OS X driver that allows you to use your Android phone's native USB tethering mode.

It's a kernel extension, and requires NO software installed on your phone, and NO background apps on your Mac; if your phone supports RNDIS tethering, you're good to go! To make you salivate a little more, it looks like this when it's running:

I've tested it on my machines, and a few of my friends have tested it on their machines, but it hasn't gotten *hugely* wide testing yet, which is why I'm still tagging it as a [BETA].

If you're interested, give it a shot... you can grab it from my web site, and if you're so inclined, get the source on GitHub, too.

Let me know if it works for you!

joshua

sklarskyj · Nov 19, 2012

This is awesome!

This works great on my VZW GS3. Seems more stable than wi-fi tethering. Easy to set up. Been looking for something like this for a while.

rafaelperrone · Nov 22, 2012

Hey, this works great! I've tried hundreds of tips for my SGS and none worked until this one. Thank you very much.

I have one question, though. I'd like to tether my phone WIFI connection to my Mac (not only the 3G connection). Is it possible with this kernel extension? I tried but it didn't work with the Wifi, only with 3G.

I don't know if this is not possible at all, even on Windows, or anything else.

joshua_ · Nov 23, 2012

rafaelperrone said:
I have one question, though. I'd like to tether my phone WIFI connection to my Mac (not only the 3G connection). Is it possible with this kernel extension? I tried but it didn't work with the Wifi, only with 3G.

I don't know if this is not possible at all, even on Windows, or anything else.

At least on my Galaxy Nexus, that works. You might be able to do that with CM?

Not sure why you would want to do that, though...

davedgd · Nov 23, 2012

This works fantastic on a Nexus 4 on 4.2. Anywhere I can donate a few bucks for beer money?

inkling · Nov 25, 2012

Works great on a TMo SGS3. Thank you!

dr.devman · Nov 25, 2012

This is awesome!

AL1982 · Nov 26, 2012

Fantastic. Works great on my Samsung Galaxy SII HD LTE (E120S).

dagothe9 · Nov 26, 2012

i'm going to try this!! you are the man!!! thanks!!

onealvideo · Nov 26, 2012

Confirmed Working

On Sammy Galaxy S2 Skyrocket on CM10 (stable & latest nightly) and OSX 10.7.5.

If it doesn't work at first. Make sure you reboot your Mac and then give it time to connect with your Android.

Thanks for this! I hate using bluetooth for anything and I have found that hotspot really makes this particular phone get really hot. Should help out with that since it is not transmitting via Wi-FI hotspot, saving my components within the phone!

Thanks!

visor · Nov 26, 2012

Works flawlessly with the Nexus 4 on the Three network (DC-HSDPA+). Received 8Mb/s d/l vs 1.2 Mb/s up. Very happy.

Fallon9111 · Nov 27, 2012

Hm..

Ive got a Desire HD running a port of CM10
Macbook Pro with Lion (and i doubt this is causing problems, but i have a linux partition that i installed a tonne of wireless drivers on to get it to work XD )

Anyhow, when my phone is plugged in, nothing pops up in settings or anything, i installed the Rel1 package and installed it a second time as it wasn't working. It still isn't working though :L
Also, i have the interface, 'Android Phone' alongside bluetooth, wifi etc.. but it doesn't have a data transfer icon, but a telephone icon?

Do you think this is due to port (CM10), my OS X version, or somehow connected to Linux (im not really sure how it could be, but I'm just putting it as I did have to spend a long time setting up wireless on it, and may have somehow messed up something on mac)

joshua_ · Nov 28, 2012

Thanks for the words of encouragement, everyone! I'm glad to hear that this is useful to people.

davedgd said:
This works fantastic on a Nexus 4 on 4.2. Anywhere I can donate a few bucks for beer money?

Good to hear it works for you! I'm thinking that for this I'll take a similar policy to what I did in the days of the unrevoked project; if you found this software useful, you might want to consider donating to an organization that's been fighting for years to make it possible to do this kind of work: the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Fallon9111 said:
Ive got a Desire HD running a port of CM10
Macbook Pro with Lion (and i doubt this is causing problems, but i have a linux partition that i installed a tonne of wireless drivers on to get it to work XD )

Anyhow, when my phone is plugged in, nothing pops up in settings or anything, i installed the Rel1 package and installed it a second time as it wasn't working. It still isn't working though :L
Also, i have the interface, 'Android Phone' alongside bluetooth, wifi etc.. but it doesn't have a data transfer icon, but a telephone icon?

Do you think this is due to port (CM10), my OS X version, or somehow connected to Linux (im not really sure how it could be, but I'm just putting it as I did have to spend a long time setting up wireless on it, and may have somehow messed up something on mac)

Can you try HoRNDIS-n1-test.pkg? I think that this is a similar issue to what I saw on a CM9 n1; that should fix things up for you. If that doesn't, can you file a bug in the issue tracker so I can help figure out what's going on here?

Thanks!

ChiefWilNel · Nov 28, 2012

what is the advantage of this over PDANET?

onealvideo · Nov 28, 2012

Doesn't PDANET install actual software?
From running this, it is a kernel extension so it just works.... no need to really do any settings...
Mine just worked....

PDANET also costs doesn't it?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda app-developers app

ChiefWilNel · Nov 29, 2012

onealvideo said:
Doesn't PDANET install actual software?
From running this, it is a kernel extension so it just works.... no need to really do any settings...
Mine just worked....

PDANET also costs doesn't it?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda app-developers app

pdanet costs for HTTPS sites....however the mac version doesnt.

onealvideo · Nov 29, 2012

This is completely free so that's the difference....

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda app-developers app

joshua_ · Nov 29, 2012

onealvideo said:
This is completely free so that's the difference....

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda app-developers app

Additionally, it doesn't require an 'emulation' IP stack on the phone side, so performance and compatibility may end up slightly better.

ChiefWilNel · Nov 30, 2012

anyone know of a free sms agent?

joshua_ · Dec 1, 2012

New version should support CyanogenMod phones better (if it wasn't detecting your phone, try again), and properly complain on 32-bit kernel systems; I think this is stable enough to no longer be [BETA] (Mods, feel free to remove the [BETA] from the subject). Thanks for all the kind words from everyone.

HoRNDIS: USB tethering driver for Mac OS X

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