Discovery

devices

List the serial ports the host can see, without opening any of them. Alias: ports.

$ idftool devices
╭─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────┬───────────────────┬───────────┬──────────╮
│ Port                        │ Type                │ USB serial #      │ USB ID    │ Location │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────┼──────────┤
│ /dev/cu.usbmodem11401       │ ESP USB-Serial/JTAG │ 7C:2C:67:92:79:C0 │ 303A:1001 │ 1-1.4    │
│ /dev/cu.usbmodem2101        │ ESP USB-Serial/JTAG │ B8:F8:62:49:EA:14 │ 303A:1001 │ 2-1      │
│ /dev/cu.PL2303G-USBtoUART10 │ PL2303GT            │ DPEDf103Y23       │ 067B:23C3 │ 0-1      │
╰─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────┴───────────────────┴───────────┴──────────╯

Type

What's on the other end of the USB cable, from its USB ID. The chip's built-in USB (ESP USB-Serial/JTAG) shows in cyan, USB-serial adapter chips (CP210x, CH340, CH9102, FTDI, PL2303) in yellow.

USB serial #

The USB serial number. On ESP USB-Serial/JTAG ports it's the chip's MAC, which -m matches against. On an adapter it identifies the adapter, if it has one at all.

Location

The physical USB path: bus, then hub ports. On macOS this is what the /dev/cu.usbmodem* name is built from.

Piped, it prints plain space-separated columns instead of a box, for awk and friends.

--probe, --no-probe

Connect to every port to add each board's chip and MAC, including boards behind a USB-serial adapter. This resets the boards. With a plugin installed, a Device column shows what it names each board. Defaults to the global --probe, or IDFTOOL_PROBE.

$ idftool devices --probe
Probing 2 port(s)…
╭─────────────────────────────┬─────────────┬───────────────────┬─────────────────────┬───────────────────┬───────────┬──────────╮
│ Port                        │ Chip        │ MAC               │ Type                │ USB serial #      │ USB ID    │ Location │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────┼──────────┤
│ /dev/cu.usbmodem11401       │ ESP32-S3    │ 7c:2c:67:92:79:c0 │ ESP USB-Serial/JTAG │ 7C:2C:67:92:79:C0 │ 303A:1001 │ 1-1.4    │
│ /dev/cu.PL2303G-USBtoUART10 │ unavailable │                   │ PL2303GT            │ DPEDf103Y23       │ 067B:23C3 │ 0-1      │
╰─────────────────────────────┴─────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────────────┴───────────────────┴───────────┴──────────╯

/dev/cu.PL2303G-USBtoUART10: no response (not an ESP, or not in download mode)