Android MTP support

RayDude · Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2020 5:42 pm Post subject: Android MTP support

What do you all use to move images off your Android devices?

I've used go-mtp, mtpfs, jmtpfs, and others and have not had much luck with one being stable for more than a few months.

The mtp support built into KDE is pretty good, but won't let me delete files. I need to move the images and video off our phones to my server.

What is the best mtp support you've found?

Thanks.
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Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2020 9:21 pm Post subject:

I gave up on MTP a long time ago as I found it unreliable. Must try it again one of these days.

You don't say what hardware, network software and network interfaces you have, but I use a variety of methods for getting photos from my phone to my servers:

1. NAS

For this I use SMB. My Samsung phone has Android 9 and supports SMB V2. I use the File Manager+ app's Remote facility to transfer photos to my NAS using SMB. When at home I use File Manager+ with the server's internal IP address in the SMB URL; when away from home I use OpenVPN and File Manager+.

2. ownCloud (presumably Nextcloud is similar)

Option 1: I installed the Cirrus app on my phone, and move phone photos into that app, from where they are sync'ed to my server.

Option 2: I have the ownCloud desktop app installed in Gentoo (KDE) on my laptop. I transfer photos from the phone to the laptop using KDE Connect via Wi-Fi, then the photos are sync'ed to the server by the ownCloud desktop app.

Option 3: File Manager+ also supports WebDAV. When at home I copy photos from the phone directly to my ownCloud server by using File Manager+ with the internal IP address in the WebDAV URL. When away from home I copy photos from the phone to my ownCloud server by using File Manager+ with the server domain name in the WebDAV URL.

You mentioned KDE. Is that on your desktop/laptop, or on your server? If on your server, and if your server has a wireless interface, KDE Connect is very fast (much faster than Bluetooth). I occasionally use Bluetooth to transfer photos from my phone to my laptop for syncing to my server, but usually use KDE Connect if Wi-Fi is available.

3. Syncthing

I have not used it myself, but I've heard good things about Syncthing. You could install the Syncthing app on your phone and Syncthing on your server and get the photos from the phone to the server that way.
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Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

MTP works fine for me in Thunar, if slow.

charles17 · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2008 Posts: 3664

adb pull provided by dev-util/android-tools.

fturco · Veteran Joined: 08 Dec 2010 Posts: 1181 Location: Italy

I found MTP to be too unreliable, so I don't use it anymore.
I now use adb pull from dev-util/android-tools for files and adb-sync from app-mobilephone/adb-sync for directories.

SpackmanChris · n00b Joined: 24 Mar 2019 Posts: 7

I have had similar issues with MTP being unreliable. Now, I just use SyncThing (https://syncthing.net) because I have it set up on my main computer anyhow, so I just needed to add it to the phone. The app is in f-droid (https://f-droid.org). SyncThing has a small learning curve, but if you can handle Gentoo, it shouldn't be an issue.

It works great for sending files both ways and for removing files. The downside is that you do have to leave at least copies of files you want on your phone on your computer also - if you move them / remove them, they will be removed from the phone also. If you have enough space on your computer's hard disk, that may not be a problem.
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RayDude · Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2020 4:02 pm Post subject:

Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks mtp is not good.

I've used adb pull and push in the past.

Do you all remember when android didn't use mtp and made the device look like a flash drive? That was perfectly brilliant. They changed it because only one OS could mount it at a time causing issues for android.

I just wish they'd debug mtp. How hard could it be?

I'll check out syncthing.
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Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2020 3:44 pm Post subject:

Update: I had sys-fs/mtpfs installed and gave up using it because it was unusable. I could transfer, at best, one photo from the phone to my laptop before MTP stopped working. The phone kept prompting me to Accept/Decline connection to the laptop. Today I decided to try again connecting my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 to my laptop to see if MTP is still unusable. It was. So I unmerged sys-fs/mtpfs and merged sys-fs/simple-mtpfs instead. Much, much better. Not perfect, but I was able to transfer 400+ photos quickly from the phone to the laptop with only a few prompts on the phone to Accept/Decline connection to the laptop.

RayDude · Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 12:16 am Post subject:

I did almost the same thing and came to the same conclusion. When I saw that simple-mtpfs was C based, I thought "what the hell, I'll give it a try."

And it seems to work and be pretty reliable.

So simple-mtpfs has my vote as well.
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