my Pixel 2 has a hardware display issue, and I’m trying to access it from my Windows 11 machine by USB. The screen of the phone is barely working, but I can tell clearly that the “Enable USB debugging” switch is ON in Developer Options. However, when I plug the phone into the computer by USB, I’m pretty sure there’s no “USB debugging is enabled” notification in the phone’s notification tray, and adb devices comes up blank, even though I am able to browse the device’s storage through the same connection via MTP.

The same exact setup works great with my other device, which is the same model on the same OS version.

What could possibly be going on here? Could it just be related to flakiness of the USB connection, even though MTP is working?