How do I transfer files between Android and Linux over USB?

Question

I want to copy some movie files from Linux to my HTC One SV Android phone (not rooted).

In Windows, my phone mount its internal and SD-card volumes automatically when I plug it in, allowing me to transfer files.

In Linux Mint 13 Mate, I always get an error when I plug my phone in with a USB cable, then it may take some minutes to mount, and it sometimes fails. I think the error was—

Error initializing camera: -60: Could not lock the device

How can I make this work?

Answer 1

UPDATE: There are several, better alternatives to Airdroid now. However, it seems most Linux distros are now working with MTP fairly well. I know in my experience, Mint (Ubuntu based) works out of the box, as does Manjaro (Arch based). If it doesn't work out of the box or natively, then be sure to search your package manager for an MTP solution.

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Newer versions of Android mount storage as an MTP device instead of mass storage. The benefit to this is simultaneous access on the Android device and the PC. Unfortunately, while Windows supports it natively just fine, linux solutions are fairly buggy as of right now.

Currently, the most reliable (and it still is a little flaky to get going, but once connected is fine) that I have found is go-mtpfs. Here is a link to help you get it set up. You have to mount/dismount from command line. There is also a unity launcher in that thread if you're on Ubuntu unity, however.

The best option, though, unless you are transferring a lot of data, is to use something like AirDroid. It is a free app in the play store for local network transfers, and provides a web interface to use with your computer's browser. It even provides a drag and drop file interface, as well as even allowing access for sms messaging, call logs, app installs, and many other things.

Answer 2

You could try using the free (gratis) ES File Explorer file manager on your Android phone.

Among a lot of functionality, it has an FTP server. So, if you can network your phone and your computer, you can easily transfer files both ways from your computer. I do it all the time from Ubuntu and Fedora machines (via Thunar).

The FTP server mode in this app is called "Remote Manager", it's under the Tools section.

Most modern file managers will accept the following syntax:

ftp://phone_ip_address:port

Answer 3

After looking for a bunch of solutions to this problem, I've found Android File Transfer for Linux. This is the best MTP implementation for Linux, it just works.

You can see that this problem has been stated in The List of Major Linux Problems on the Desktop.

Linux doesn't have a reliably working hassle free fast native (directly mountable via the kernel; FUSE doesn't cut it) MTP implementation. In order to work with your MTP devices, like ... Linux based Android phones you'd better use ... Windows or MacOS X. Update: a Russian programmer was so irked by libMTP he wrote his own complete Qt based application which talks to the Linux kernel directly using libusb. Meet Android-File-Transfer-Linux.

Answer 4

mtpfs - FUSE filesystem for Media Transfer Protocol devices

apt-get install mtpfs

Done. Works as with Windows in Linux Mint/Ubuntu/etc.

Answer 5

Basically this should be as easy as using a memory stick. Unfortunately this is not the case. But like other integrations Linux will catch up.

In the meantime you could use WiFi and sshd on Linux and an sftp-client on the smartphone side.

Or use the Linux adb CLI to use usb-transfers.

Answer 6

Here's another very easy way. If you have xfce4 installed, run thunar. It just works. No mount-ing no mtp-ing. You can drag and drop in the thunar windows.

I have a full install of Slackware, so Xfce is just there even though I never use it as a desktop. It doesn't eat up disk space and is occasionally useful.

NB: You have to tell the phone to use USB for file transfer or PTP so that thunar can see it. On my OnePlus5 android 9, there's a notification when I plug in the USB cable that allows me to choose connection options.

Answer 7

I agree it's not as easy as it should be. For example, KDE has an implementation of MTP, but it can only read images, not write them (at least in my version).

I found it was far easier to do it over the network. There are multiple ways to do this. Usuario mentioned ES File Explorer.

I used this free and open source Android FTP server and found it straightforward. You specify a username and password, then run the FTP server (it's very clear whether the server is running, and easy to enable/disable).

Then, you simply use any FTP client (there are many graphical clients, e.g. I used Konqueror). I was able to write the files back to the phone easily.

The only downsides are that it's probably a little slower than it would be with an efficient USB protocol, and that FTP is not secure (everything is in cleartext). It should be possible to do the same thing, but with an Android SFTP server; I just haven't personally found one yet.

Answer 8

I was able to use rsync to get my files over from my HTC phone. The commands were:

$ mkdir HTC_Dump
$ cd HTC_Dump
$ rsync -av /run/user/1000/gvfs/mtp\:host\=%5Busb%3A002%2C010%5D/ ./

Resulting in:

sent 12,947,428,344 bytes received 38,549 bytes 9,738,598.64 bytes/sec total size is 12,944,119,635 speedup is 1.00

I found the phone files location by looking in my /run directory.

This was on Xubuntu 17.10, Artful Aardvark, the Android was on an HTC running Android version 7.0.

Answer 9

I do this via FTP network created by ES File Explorer.

First of all, make your device as a portable hotspot in settings → Tethering & portable hotspot → check "Portable wifi hotspot", and then connect your PC to the device with WiFi.

It makes your connection faster than connection via central WLAN network. Then, do the following steps:

1. Open ES File Explorer
2. Go to Network → Remote Manager
3. Press "Turn on" button
4. In Linux (I use Ubuntu), open its file manager
5. Click "Connect to Server" in the file manager left side
6. Enter the address of your device has appeared in ES File Explorer

(ftp://...:...).

Now, you can treat with your device like a drive in your PC.

Answer 10

I've found that it only works for USB if I use the cable supplied with that device or a similar device. The USB cable from my defunct Samsung tablet works fine with my Android Onix replacement. The only thing that works for my phone is that cable that came with it. Other USB charging / transfer cables don't work or not fully: won't copy .mp3 files for example. No idea why this is. But non device cables often don't show up as a USB device attachment.

I have not had to modify software or use special software. Just works.

Answer 11

Assuming you're using a USB connection, I found it works, but you need to do things in a specific order:

• Don't plug in the phone to start with.
• On the phone, go into Settings -> Wireless and Network -> USB Utilities, and click the "Connect store to PC". The phone will say "Connect USB cable to use mass storage".
• Now plug in the USB cable to the phone. It should show the "green android" icon and USB connected message.

(I think my phone has an older version of Android, hopefully this works in the general case).

Answer 12

In Linux Mint 19.1 transferring large numbers of photos can easily be done by activating Developer Options, and the going into the Android phone 'Settings' 'Developer Options,' 'USB Configuration." Then choose PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol) instead of MTP. Now photos will transfer at lightning speed just using the file explorer.

Answer 13

Lots of good answers I just want to simplify everything:

sudo apt install mtp-tools

Now plug in your Android phone via USB, cable matters so if one doesn't work try another.

mtp-detect

Done. Open up your file app or terminal and transfer away!

Answer 14

I just got a Google Pixel 3 phone, and I need to move pictures/videos from it to my Linux Mint 18.2. Here's how I did it:

1. On my phone, I installed Cx File Explorer
2. I opened the app, and hit the 'Network' tab
3. I hit the 'Access from PC' button
4. I left the defaults on the checkboxes ('Random port number' checked, 'Show hidden files' unchecked), and hit 'Start Service'
5. Cx File Explorer displayed an FTP URL
6. On my Linux laptop, I opened the file manager, and clicked on the 'File -> Connect to Server ...' option
7. In the 'Connect to Server' dialog, I entered the FTP URL from step (5) in the 'Server' textbox, and clicked 'Connect'
8. I can now see my phone's files in my laptop file manager
9. The photos and videos I want to transfer are located under device/DCIM/Camera (and not in the device/Movies or device/Pictures folders, like you might think).

Answer 15

I am running Mint 19.2. My phone is a Pixel 1st Gen running Android 10. After google'ing for a solution and trying the MTP options suggested by many without success, I found that if you go to Settings -> Connect devices -> USB and change "USE USB FOR File transfer/Android Auto", Nemo mounts the phone's storage and gives access to the devices files. My phone was set the "No data transfer". Now had I checked the USB settings first the MTP solutions may have probably worked. As a side note, none of the suggested solutions on StackExchange, HowToForge or OMG! mentioned checking the USB settings on the phone first. I did read a few posts that MTP on Mint "works out of the box". But again, no mention of checking your phones settings. Hope this helps.

Answer 16

An sdcard is normally an exfat file system, which is by default not recognized by Ubuntu by default -- I do not know if this is the case with other distributions. To make my Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to be able to write to an exfat file system I did:

sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

Now I can just plugin my Android phone on my Ubuntu desktop with USB and copy files to my sdcard (64GB).

Answer 17

You don't have to install anything.

just follow as follows :

1. connect your USB cable(?) between your linux machine and your smart phone. (USB cable(?) : you always use when charging your smart phone.)

2. Then your phone ask if you allow access to device data If you choose Allow, then an MTP connection will be established to access.

3. You can transfer files between your linux machine and your adndroid.

That's all.

Answer 18

Try this command, and restart, it worked for me.

sudo apt-get install libmtp-common mtp-tools libmtp-dev libmtp-runtime libmtp9