Cp2102 Usb Drivers For Mac

For what it is worth I will add some information regarding this issue.

The CP210x USB to UART Bridge Virtual COM Port (VCP) drivers are required for device operation as a Virtual COM Port to facilitate host communication with CP210x products. These devices can also interface to a host using the direct access driver. MacDada changed the title from CP2102 OSX drivers? To CP2102 OSX drivers. Audiobox USB - I've bought this hub, plugged it at the power source and plugged the hardware at the hub and then the USB hub at the Mac book Air's USB port. I've just got my NODEMCU ESP-12e with CP2102 (1.0), I'm using a MAC AIR, but the device doesn't.

Short story nodeMCU 1.0 devkit on mpb from 2013. Could not see any drivers in /dev folder. Only did see bluetooth entry in /dev/ from esplorer.

So, the drivers from silabs was the problem. When you install something on high sierra (and before?) there is a security measure that won't allow unsigned drivers to install. Looking into it i found that

I did not see any error when running the installer from silabs. But if you go to

System preferences -> Security & Drivers

Usb drivers for mac

there will be some information at the bottom of the screen regarding this. So, what I did was that I clicked on the link that is supplied in Security & Drivers to allow the driver to be installed (or if it is the installer that is allowed to run). THEN reinstalled the silabs driver but using the legacy drivers. Now, I had seen somewhere that you might had to run the installer twice. So I did that and that was it. Communication to the nodeMCU did work from inside esplorer.

Active1 year, 4 months ago

I have the ESP32 board with Silicon Labs CP2102 controller. When I connect it to my MacBook, I can get the details about this device using the command system_profiler SPUSBDataType, but it is not listed in /dev as a virtual serial port - so I can't communicate with it.

I'm using the official driver downloaded from https://www.silabs.com/products/development-tools/software/usb-to-uart-bridge-vcp-drivers.

Any ideas how to make it visible in /dev? I have also Windows installed on the same computer where it works fine, so the HW and the USB cable are OK.

Dominik Palo
Dominik PaloDominik Palo
1,4122 gold badges23 silver badges37 bronze badges

2 Answers

I found that macOS High Sierra has blocked the SiLabs kernel extension.

Here are steps to allow this extension:

  1. Go to 'System Preferences' -> 'Security & Privacy'
  2. In the bottom of the window, you will see a message 'System software from developer 'SiLabs' was blocked from loading.'
  3. Click on 'Allow' button
  4. Restart your Mac

Now my device is listed as /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART and everything work as expected.

Dominik Palo

Cp2102 Usb Driver Mac

Dominik Palo
1,4122 gold badges23 silver badges37 bronze badges

The Allow button did not work for me, so I had to disable checking altogether:

Bootable Usb For Mac

  1. Shut Down
  2. Hold mac+ R during boot to enter recovery mode
  3. Open a terminal
  4. type spctl kext-consent disable and press enter
  5. Reboot
  6. It worked
Vlad NistorVlad Nistor

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged macosdriverhardwareiotvirtual-serial-port or ask your own question.