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# Media Transfer Protocol

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Related articles

- Android#Transferring files
- USB storage devices

The Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) can be used to transfer media files to and from many mobile phones (all Windows Phone 7/8/10 devices, most newer Android devices) and media players (e.g. Creative Zen).

## Connecting

To connect your computer to a device via MTP:

- the device needs to be connected to your computer via USB
- MTP needs to be enabled on the device
- the device's screen needs to be unlocked (for security reasons)

## FUSE filesystems

The following programs let you access MTP devices via a FUSE filesystem.

Note MTP is messy and its implementation varies between devices. Try the below clients and see which one works best with your device.
Tip It is recommended to reboot your computer after installing MTP related packages.

For the FUSE-based file systems, you might need to create the mount-point directory first. The directory `~/mnt` is used in the examples below.

FUSE mounts can generally be unmounted using `fusermount -u mountpoint`.

### Android File Transfer

Android File Transfer — MTP client with CLI, Qt UI, and FUSE wrapper which uses a custom MTP implementation

  https://whoozle.github.io/android-file-transfer-linux/ || android-file-transfer

Mount your device on `~/mnt`:

    $ aft-mtp-mount ~/mnt

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.

If you want to interact with it via the command line interface, run the command:

    $ aft-mtp-cli

Type help in order to list all the commands available, exit to quit.

If you want to interact with it via the graphical user interface, start the android-file-transfer application, choose a destination folder and click any button on the toolbar. Available options are: Upload Album, Upload Directory and Upload Files. The latter two are self-explanatory. Upload album searches the source directory for album covers, and sets the best available cover.

### MTPfs

MTPfs — based on libmtp, it is a FUSE filesystem that supports reading and writing from any MTP device

  https://www.adebenham.com/mtpfs/ || mtpfs

Note The following is likely to not work and you might have to resort to libgphoto2 or a file manager with gvfs support like PCManFM.

First edit your `/etc/fuse.conf` and uncomment the following line:

    user_allow_other

Mount your device on `~/mnt`:

    $ mtpfs -o allow_other ~/mnt

### jmtpfs

jmtpfs — based on libmtp for accessing MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) devices

  https://github.com/JasonFerrara/jmtpfs || jmtpfsAUR

Mount device on `~/mnt`:

    $ jmtpfs ~/mnt

Make this cohere to the rest of Linux (use regular mount/umount commands) by doing two steps

    $# ln -s <actual mount command's path/name>  <a name consistent with Linux's mount convention>
    $  ln -s /sbin/jmtpfs                        /sbin/mount.jmtpfs

add this line to `/etc/fstab`;

     #jmtpfs <mount path>        fuse nodev,allow_other,<other options>                             0    0
      jmtpfs /home/sam/run/motog fuse nodev,allow_other,rw,user,noauto,noatime,uid=1000,gid=1000    0    0

Now mount the device and see if the options "took"

     $ mount /home/sam/run/motog
     Device 0 (VID=22b8 and PID=2e82) is a Motorola Moto G (ID2).
     Android device detected, assigning default bug flags
     $ mount
      ...
      jmtpfs on /home/sam/run/motog type fuse.jmtpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000,allow_other,user=sam)

### SIMPLE-MTPFS

SIMPLE-MTPFS — based on libmtp Simple Media Transfer Protocol FileSystem is a file system capable of operating on files on MTP devices attached via USB to local machine

  https://github.com/phatina/simple-mtpfs/ || simple-mtpfsAUR

Run `simple-mtpfs -l` to list detected devices.

To mount the first device in the list to `~/mnt`, run `simple-mtpfs --device 1 ~/mnt`.

### go-mtpfs

go-mtpfs — FUSE filesystem with custom MTP implementation, written in Go

  https://github.com/hanwen/go-mtpfs || go-mtpfs-gitAUR

Install android-udev, which will allow you to edit `/etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules` and apply to your `idVendor` and `idProduct`, which you can see after running mtp-detect. To the end of the line, add your user `OWNER="user"`.

Mount device on `~/mnt`:

    $ go-mtpfs ~/mnt

Note

- When using multiple devices you may want to use the `-d` flag to specify a device (id can be found by running `mtp-detect`)
- Mounting with `go-mtpfs` might fail if an external SD Card is present. If you try to access your device while having an SD card and go-mtpfs complains, try removing the SD card and mounting again.
- This package has not been maintained since 2020.

## libmtp

libmtp is a library MTP implementation, which also comes with some example command-line tools (which you can list using `pacman -Ql libmtp`).

Install the libmtp package.

Run `mtp-detect` to detect your device.

If an error is returned, make sure your user is in the `adbusers` user group.

`libmtp` is meant to be used as a library, not by an end user. Other then the `mtp-detect` command, the other commands-line tools are likely to be unnecessarily error prone for daily work. The upstream author refers to them as examples. As of Jan2025, see lines 115-138 of the README file. For a more concrete example see the old, but demonstrating, suggestion for Copying file from MTP device using libmtp (over USB). It is recommended to use a front end.

### Frontends

gMTP — A graphical frontend for libmtp. It lets you connect to Android devices and manage files using a desktop agnostic GUI.

  https://gmtp.sourceforge.io/ || gmtp

## Media players

You can also use your MTP device in music players such as Amarok. To achieve this, you might have to edit `/etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules` (the MTP device used in the following example is a Galaxy Nexus). Run:

    $ lsusb

Search for your device. It should be something like that:

    Bus 003 Device 011: ID 04e8:6860 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd GT-I9100 Phone [Galaxy S II], GT-P7500 [Galaxy Tab 10.1]

And entry to `/etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules` will be this:

    SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="04e8", ATTR{idProduct}=="6860", MODE="0666", OWNER="[username]"

Also reload udev rules:

    # udevadm control --reload

## File manager integration

To view the contents of your Android device's storage via MTP in your file manager, install the corresponding plugin:

- For file managers that use GVFS (GNOME Files), install gvfs-mtp for MTP or gvfs-gphoto2 for PTP support.
- For file managers that use KIO (KDE's Dolphin), MTP support is included in kio-extras (dependency of dolphin).

After installing the required package, the device should show up in the file manager automatically and be accessible via an URL, for example `mtp://[usb:002,013]/`.

### gvfs-mtp

This article or section is a candidate for merging with udev.

Notes: please use the second argument of the template to provide more detailed indications. (Discuss in Talk:Media Transfer Protocol)

The gvfs-mtp is available in the official repositories.

With `lsusb` you can get information about your device where Bus and Device numbers can be used with `gvfs-mtp` and device ID for creating of a udev rule.

    Bus 002 Device 018: ID 04b7:88a9 Compal Electronics, Inc.

To see detected device with enabled MTP

Use gio mount:

    gio mount -li | grep -e ^Volume -e activation_root

    Volume(0): MT65xx Android Phone
      activation_root=mtp://[usb:002,018]/

Use lsusb:

    lsusb -v 2> /dev/null | grep -e Bus -e iInterface -e bInterfaceProtocol

    ...
    Bus 002 Device 018: ID 04b7:88a9 Compal Electronics, Inc.
          bInterfaceProtocol      0
          iInterface              5 MTP
    ...

To mount all available connected MTP devices use inline script

    gio mount -li | awk -F= '{if(index($2,"mtp") == 1)system("gio mount "$2)}'

To mount or unmount from a command with gvfs-mtp use Bus and Device numbers, e.g. to mount `gio mount mtp://[usb:001,007]/` and to unmount `gio mount -u mtp://[usb:001,007]/`. The mounted device will be available in a directory that begins with mtp:host= and is located under /run/user/$UID/gvfs/.

To disable automount of MTP devices with gvfs you will need to change value true to false for variable AutoMount that is located in `/usr/share/gvfs/mounts/mtp.mount`.

Note The file managers can have own options for automount. On start they are checking for all available mountable devices.

If your device is not showing up in the file manager then #libmtp is missing a native support and is not currently available in the list of the supported devices. If you will try to mount by using command line you may also get an error

    Device 0 (VID=XXXX and PID=XXXX) is UNKNOWN.
    Please report this VID/PID and the device model to the libmtp development team

The workaround to make it shown in the file manager is to write a udev rule for the device but it is no guaranty that you will be able to mount it by using MTP connection.

Use ID number that is represented by the pattern vendorId:productID, e.g. 04b7:88a9, and make a udev rule by creating a configuration file

    /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

    SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="04b7", ATTR{idProduct}=="88a9", MODE="0660", GROUP="uucp", ENV{ID_MTP_DEVICE}="1", SYMLINK+="libmtp"

Reload the udev rules.

    # udevadm control --reload

The file managers with support for gvfs will be able to show MTP devices and mount them if supported by #libmtp but if has no support and cannot be opened then change settings in the phone to PTP and install gvfs-gphoto2 for having access at least to the photos, command line mounting of PTP is a little similar to mounting of the MTP devices: `gio mount gphoto2://[usb:002,019]/`.

Note If you getting limited access to the device and cannot use standard commands from command line such as e.g. `cp`,`ls` then look for gvfs own alternatives, `ls -1 /usr/bin/gvfs-*`.

## Troubleshooting

### libmtp (gvfs-mtp): filemanager (nautilus, pcmanfm, vifm and etc) hangs on accessing DCIM/Camera of Android device

Symptoms: everything works fine till moment of entering DCIM/Camera directory. In this case filemanager freezes and even in command line you cannot run even `ls` on that directory.

Possible and very probable reason is the bug of libmtp.

It seems that it is caused by file with name like `20180915_180351(0).jpg`. Samsung phones for example like to create files with such names.

There are several tickets (one, two and etc) and questions (one, two) about it.

So possible workaround is to use different mtp option from #FUSE filesystems like go-mtpfs for such directories or somehow change file naming policy of your phone camera (or switch to another camera app like Open Camera for example).

### jmtpfs: Input/output error upon first access

Symptoms: jmtpfs successfully mounts, but as soon as one attempts to access files on the device (e.g. via `ls`), an error is reported:

     cannot access <mount-point>: Input/output error

This appears to be a security feature: MTP does not work when the phone is locked by the lockscreen. Unlock the phone and it should work again as long as the cord remains connected.

### kio-mtp: cannot use "Open with File Manager" action

If you are not able to use the action "Open with File Manager", you may work around this problem by editing the file `/usr/share/solid/actions/solid_mtp.desktop`.

Change the line `Exec=kioclient exec mtp:udi=%i/` to `Exec=dolphin "mtp:/"`.

### kio-mtp being called simultaneously by different services

Parallel usage of mtpfs and kio-mtp, as well as conflicting services using kio-mtp -music players included- should be avoided, as mentioned in this forum.

Amarok's plugin for MTP services, for example, might be preventing Dolphin (plasma) to access different phone model's files. Switching it off was a solution for at least one user.

Categories:

- Storage
- Mobile devices

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