Android File Transfer For Linux (FreeBSD and Mac OS X!)

Android File Transfer for Linux — reliable MTP client with minimalistic UI similar to Android File Transfer for Mac.

It just works™.

Do I need it?

If you’re happy with gmtp/gvfs/mtpfs or any other mtp software, you might not need this software (but give it a try!).

If you’re suffering from crashes, missing tags, album covers, usb freezes and corrupted files, this software is right for you.

Pre-built Packages

If your distribution does not provide android-file-transfer-linux package, you can still install it in your system. There’s quite a few packages available:

Snapcraft: https://snapcraft.io/android-file-transfer-linux
AppImage: https://github.com/whoozle/android-file-transfer-linux/releases
MacOSX DMG image: https://github.com/whoozle/android-file-transfer-linux/releases
MacOSX Homebrew: brew cask install whoozle-android-file-transfer or brew cask install whoozle-android-file-transfer-nightly

Support me

If you want to help me with development, click on the link below and follow the instructions. I’m developing AFTL in my spare time and try to fix everything as fast as possible, sometimes adding features in realtime (more than 100 tickes closed by now). Any amount would help relieving pain of using MTP. :D

https://www.paypal.me/whoozle

Features

Simple Qt UI with progress dialogs.
FUSE wrapper (If you’d prefer mounting your device), supporting partial read/writes, allowing instant access to your files.
No file size limits.
Automatically renames album cover to make it visible from media player.
Supports Zune/Zune HD.
USB ‘Zerocopy’ support found in recent Linux kernel (no user/kernel data copying)
No extra dependencies (e.g. libptp/libmtp).
Available as static/shared library.
Command line tool (aft-mtp-cli)
Python bindings

FAQ

Please take a look at FAQ if you have issues with your operating system. It’s not that big, but those are the questions asked very often.

Building instructions

Gentoo

AFT for Linux is now included in Gentoo, you don’t have to build anything, just run

  sudo emerge -av sys-fs/android-file-transfer-linux

If you need fuse mount helper to mount MTP filesystem, you have to enable fuse use flag, e.g. adding the following in /etc/portage/package.use (which can either be a directory or a file)

  sys-fs/android-file-transfer-linux fuse

You can use sys-fs/android-file-transfer-linux-9999 ebuild if you want the latest git-version by adding the following entry into /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords (which can either be a directory or a file)

  =sys-fs/android-file-transfer-linux-9999 **

Prerequisites

You will need Qt libraries for building ui program. If you’re planning to use only library (Qt is not needed), you could turn the option BUILD_QT_UI off.

For ubuntu and other debian-based distros use the following command:

sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake qt5-default ninja-build libfuse-dev libreadline-dev qttools5-dev

For Fedora:

dnf install make automake gcc gcc-c++ kernel-devel cmake fuse fuse-devel qt-devel readline-devel libqt5-linguist-devel

Basically, you need libqtX-dev for UI, libfuse-dev for FUSE interface, cmake, ninja or make for building the project. You could use libqt5-dev as well.

Building with ninja

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G Ninja ..
ninja

./qt/android-file-transfer

Building with make

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

./qt/android-file-transfer

Installing binary package on OS X / macOS

There is a binary package that can be installed via Homebrew:

First install brew if you don’t have it already installed.
Then the stable package may be installed via:

brew install homebrew/cask/whoozle-android-file-transfer

Nighlty build may be installed via;

brew install homebrew/cask-versions/whoozle-android-file-transfer-nightly

Please note: they are in conflict, so please make sure to uninstall it when you want switch between stable and nightly.

Building app package on OS X / macOS

You’ll need Qt installed to build the GUI app. Here are the build instructions with qt5 from homebrew (brew install qt5):

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/Applications -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/usr/local/opt/qt5
make
make install

open ~/Applications/android-file-transfer.app

Installation

sudo ninja install or sudo make install will install program into cmake prefix/bin directory (usually /usr/local/bin)

How to use

FUSE interface

mkdir ~/my-device
./aft-mtp-mount ~/my-device

Remember, if you want album art to be displayed, it must be named ‘albumart.xxx’ and placed first in the destination folder. Then copy other files. Also, note that fuse could be 7-8 times slower than ui/cli file transfer.

Qt user interface

Start application, choose destination folder and click any button on toolbar.
The options available there are: Upload Album, Upload Directory and Upload Files. The latter two are self-explanatory. Upload album tries searching source directory for album cover and sets best available cover.
You could drop any files or folders right into application window, the transfer will start automatically.

Known problems

Samsung removed android extensions from MTP, so fuse will be available readonly, sorry. Feel free to post your complaints to http://developer.samsung.com/forum/en
Sometimes downloading fails with usb timeout, then phone becomes unresponsive. Android bug #75259
Objects created in UI will not show up in FUSE filesystem. Android bug #169547

Up to date list of all known problems and bugs available here

Contacts

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further questions, my email address is vladimir.menshakov@gmail.com.

Special thanks

All who filed bugs on github and wrote emails, many features appeared only because of your feedback. Thanks!
Alexey gazay Gaziev for useful suggestions, support and invaluable help with MacBook and MacOSX port.
@ssnjrthegr8 for the new logo!

License

Android File Transfer for Linux is released under GNU LGPLv2.1 License.