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Moving files from Mac to Android WITHOUT AndroidFileTransfer.

Started by magval, November 15, 2020, 11:40:00 AM

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magval

Android File Transfer is an absolute bollocks when it comes to moving music files across from Mac to Android manually because it'll sometimes fail because of one track but not tell you what the problem is, not give you an option to abandon or skip the track, and it completely cancels the remainder of the operation.

Are there better apps you can recommend for a task like this, given that there don't seem to be any apps that sync music files between the two?

Zetetic


QDRPHNC

Depends how much you have to move.

For a lot, just use a USB stick.

For a little, move the files to Drive on your Mac and download them on your phone.

magval

Quote from: QDRPHNC on November 15, 2020, 03:36:49 PM
Depends how much you have to move.

For a lot, just use a USB stick.

For a little, move the files to Drive on your Mac and download them on your phone.

Can't do the USB thing because the phone only has internal memory, no SD card. It's only a music library but it's 7 or 8 thousand songs so it's a real ordeal when you can't just leave it running in the background in case one of those files confused the app and you've to start again.

I'll try the above. Thanks both.

olliebean

When I needed to transfer loads of podcasts and music files from my Windows PC to my Android phone I did it by running an FTP server (FileZilla - the server isn't available for Mac but I'm sure there are alternatives) on the PC and syncing the directory to Android using the FolderSync app. Just gets on with it over WiFi in the background whilst you carry on doing whatever.

QDRPHNC

Quote from: magval on November 15, 2020, 05:19:20 PM
Can't do the USB thing because the phone only has internal memory, no SD card. It's only a music library but it's 7 or 8 thousand songs so it's a real ordeal when you can't just leave it running in the background in case one of those files confused the app and you've to start again.

I'll try the above. Thanks both.

Dunno which phone you have, but my Pixel can read a USB stick from its USB-C connector.

touchingcloth

Quote from: olliebean on November 15, 2020, 05:54:29 PM
When I needed to transfer loads of podcasts and music files from my Windows PC to my Android phone I did it by running an FTP server (FileZilla - the server isn't available for Mac but I'm sure there are alternatives) on the PC and syncing the directory to Android using the FolderSync app. Just gets on with it over WiFi in the background whilst you carry on doing whatever.

OSX has a native FTP server. I won't link to a specific guide cos there are loads, but that sounds like it might be the way to go if the FolderSync app mentioned is viable.

magval

Quote from: QDRPHNC on November 15, 2020, 09:31:48 PM
Dunno which phone you have, but my Pixel can read a USB stick from its USB-C connector.

If I was able to load the files onto a memory card/usb stick, then insert the stick into the phone via an adaptor, how would I transfer the contents from the stick to the phone? Does the phone have the means to do that?

It's a Huawei P20 if that helps

QDRPHNC

Yep, Google Files or a third party file manager will let you move or copy files to your internal Music folder.

Maybe look up how best to format the stick to be on the safe side, but Fat32 is usually a safe bet.

Zetetic

Going to be faff when you add or delete music of course, which is why two of us have now suggested syncing apps.

SyncThing will involve a bit of setup, I admit, but it's mostly a matter of installing it on both your Mac and your phone, ensuring that you're using a folder on your phone that it'll find music in

Edit: I sync to /Android/media/the.app.identifier/a_subfolder and that works.

QDRPHNC

If it's 8000 songs, I'd shift them via usb and then sync for the future.

Zetetic

Fair enough!

(My perspective is probably skewed by the weird mix of ancient hardware that I mostly use.)

QDRPHNC

I'm a relatively recent convert to syncing and cloud storage and such. I think partly I've been conditioned by the absurdly high costs and ridiculously low data caps of Canadian telcos. It's a bit better these days, but the scars remain.

Zetetic

Mmm. I also use SyncThing to backup photos from my phone to a couple of other machines, and I've always set it up to run on my phone only when it it has 1) WiFi and 2) mains power.

And disabled NAT Traversal as well, which pretty much limits it to only working on my home network anyway.

But, of course, all this complicates setting the thing up in the first place.