Android hacks

File transfer over USB

Usually this means “file transfer over MTP”, which is the native/default USB protocol for filesystem access. AFAICT this is OK on Windows and surprisingly tedious on macOS. Linux usually OK but sometimes modern devices don’t work with the OS.

Mac users have the Google native app File Transfer but it’s awful.

If you are looking at transferring books because your table is an e-reader, you can use Calibre.

There are some odd proprietary solutions such as handshaker.

But surely that’s missing the point. Shouldn’t FUSE allow this to just work? Archlinux thinks so.

How about simple-mtpfs? This is home-brew installable.

It’s minimalistic to the point of sullen

simple-mtpfs mountpoint

doesn’t give errors or much feedback. And in fact, doesn’t seem to work (the folders always show empty).

Try

simple-mtpfs -v -f tmp

to run it in foreground with verbose feedback, which seems to work fine.

To mount macOS style,

sudo simple-mtpfs -o allow_other,rw -v /Volumes/mountpoint

Contra the manual, on macOS the usual unmount command works.

umount mountpoint

Or just quit.

See also go-mtpfs.

sudo apt install golang-go
sudo apt install libusb1-devel
mkdir /tmp/go
export GOPATH=/tmp/go
go get github.com/hanwen/go-mtpfs
mkdir xoom
go-mtpfs xoom &
cp -a ~/Music/Some-Album xoom/Music/
fusermount -u xoom

Alternative app repositories

• F-droid