A phone that charges normally but never triggers a USB notification, never shows up in Windows Explorer, and never appears in adb devices almost always has one specific cause that has nothing to do with drivers, USB debugging settings, or Device Manager at all: the cable itself only carries power, not data.
USB-C connectors look identical whether or not the cable inside carries data lines, unlike MicroUSB where a cheap cable at least usually still had the data pins wired even if the wiring quality was poor. Many USB-C cables bundled with power banks, car chargers, and generic charging bricks are manufactured deliberately as charge-only to save on cost, and nothing about the connector shape gives this away.
Connect the cable to the phone and a computer. If Android shows no USB notification whatsoever (no "Charging this device," no mode selector for File Transfer or PTP), the cable is charge-only. A data-capable cable always triggers at least a notification, even before any mode is manually selected, because the data lines are what let the phone and PC negotiate a USB connection in the first place; power delivery alone requires no such negotiation.
Before reinstalling a USB driver, checking Device Manager, or troubleshooting ADB authorization, swap in a cable known to carry data — ideally the cable that originally shipped in the phone's retail box, since manufacturers almost always bundle a full data-capable cable rather than a charge-only one. If the device is suddenly detected with the new cable and was not with the old one, the entire "problem" was the cable, and no driver or settings change was ever needed.
Even a data-capable USB-C cable can fail intermittently if it is very long (over roughly 2 meters) or poorly shielded, since USB 2.0 and especially USB 3.x data signaling degrades over distance more than raw charging current does. A device that is detected inconsistently — showing up sometimes, dropping to "offline" in adb devices at other times — with a long or bargain-bin cable is often not a software problem at all; switching to a shorter, better-made cable resolves it more often than any driver reinstall.
A USB-C to USB-C cable additionally needs correctly wired configuration channel (CC) lines for the two ends to negotiate roles and power delivery correctly. A cable with damaged or missing CC wiring can produce inconsistent behavior across different chargers and PCs — working for charging on one port but never negotiating a data role on another — which is a subtly different failure mode from a fully charge-only cable, but is diagnosed and fixed the same way: try a different, known-good cable before anything else.
A basic inline USB-C power meter (inexpensive and widely sold for checking charger wattage) will typically show a data-capable cable's negotiated voltage settling to a fast-charge profile once a PC or charger recognizes it, while a charge-only cable often negotiates a flat, basic 5V profile regardless of what charger or PC it is plugged into, since the very negotiation that unlocks faster charging profiles frequently depends on the same data lines that ADB detection requires.
If a cable confirmed to work for file transfer and ADB on one phone still fails to get a different phone detected, move on to checking USB Debugging status and driver installation next — at that point the cable itself has been eliminated as the cause, and the remaining troubleshooting steps documented for driver detection issues actually apply.
A USB-C port on the PC side wired only for charging (common on some cheap USB hubs and car chargers marketed as "fast charging" accessories rather than genuine data hubs) produces the exact same symptom as a charge-only cable, even with a fully data-capable cable plugged into it. Testing the same cable and phone on a different port — ideally a port built directly into the PC's motherboard rather than through any hub or dock — isolates whether the fault is in the cable or in that specific port.
For anyone regularly troubleshooting USB connections across many devices, a dedicated USB-C cable tester (a small inline device that lights up indicators for each wire present in the cable) gives a definitive answer in seconds without needing a phone, a PC, or any software at all. This is worth the modest cost for anyone doing this kind of troubleshooting often enough that the swap-and-guess method becomes genuinely time-consuming.