android-file-transfer-linux

Android File Transfer for Linux (and macOS!)

View the Project on GitHub whoozle/android-file-transfer-linux

Android File Transfer For Linux (FreeBSD and macOS, too!)

License Version Android File Transfer for Linux (and macOS!)

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

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 however, this software is right for you.

Pre-built Packages

If your distribution does not provide an android-file-transfer-linux package, you can still install it on your system.

There’s quite a few packages available:

Support me

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

https://www.paypal.me/whoozle

Features

FAQ

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

Installation

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install android-file-transfer

Gentoo

Android File Transfer 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 a FUSE mount helper to mount MTP filesystems, you have to enable the 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 the sys-fs/android-file-transfer-linux-9999 ebuild if you want the latest Git version by adding the following entry to `/etc/portage/package.accept_keywords (which can either be a directory or a file):

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

Arch

  sudo pacman -S android-file-transfer

Building from source

Prerequisites

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 macOS

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

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

Building app package on 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 the program into the 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

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

Known problems

Up-to-date list of all known problems and bugs are 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

License

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

Copyright © 2015-2022 Vladimir Menshakov