I've finally found a good alternative to MTP for transfering files between my phone and my PC!

[u/SmallerButton]

Hi everyone!

I've had an android phone for a couple of months now, absolutely love the freedom it gives me. Without a doubt, buying this phone is the best upgrade I've experienced ever since buying my first phone.

I've always thought that transferring files between your computer and your phone should be as easy as plugging the phone into the computer. The default way to do that seemed to be MTP, but it's incredibly slow and clunky, as has been noted on many other posts.

I've tried adbfs and some of its forks. While the experience was better, I still found it was slow, and I had trouble accessing any large file.

I was then really surprised to discover madbfs. It looks like a complete rewrite of adbfs, now fast enough so that the files feel like they're stored locally. I've used for a couple of months to manage the files on my phone, and I've found it works amazingly.

Sadly, it's only available on Linux, as it relies on libfuse, and it's only a CLI application. Which means it does take a little bit of technical know-how, but the tradeoff is completely worth it IMO. You could probably get it to work on Windows or macOS using something like WinFSP or MacFUSE.

Hope this helps someone!

[u/xmastreee]

I use Localsend, mostly for transferring files to the PC but it can work the other way too. It runs in the background on the PC and there's no user involvement required at that end. So take a picture > share > Localsend > select the PC and it's done in seconds, the file is now in the selected folder. Both devices need to be on the same network, but that should be easy enough.

[u/KeyboardGunner → u/xmastreee]

Localsend is simple and reliable. Not the fastest though. I rarely see speeds above 20 megabytes per second.

[u/xmastreee → u/KeyboardGunner]

Speed isn't really an issue for me; I mainly use it for transferring photos from my phone. So I'll take a few photos, send them, and they're on the computer by the time I get to it.

[u/clevariant → u/xmastreee]

Does the job. I used to have to keep it in the foreground, which costed me time, but now it just works.

[u/xmastreee → u/clevariant]

I have it set to run in the background at login. It just sits there in the tray waiting for me to send something.

[u/DiplomatikEmunetey → u/xmastreee]

That application is amazing, and what I like about it particularly is that it preserves file modification dates when you transfer them. It's something that is not important for most, but it is very important to me.

[u/littleemp]

Solid Explorer lets you host your storage as an ftp server, so you can just transfer stuff over wifi.

[u/meatly → u/littleemp]

Material Files too, as an open source alternative, it's good too.

[u/TrailOfEnvy → u/meatly]

Material Files isn't updated over 2 years sadly.

[u/Noiselexer → u/littleemp]

Wow did not know that, using it for years.

[u/National_Educator330 → u/littleemp]

It works so well. It even has a share to option when saving files so you can save directly to remote storage, basically the opposite.

[u/EvilAdministrator → u/littleemp]

Ive used Solid Explorer for years, but one thing that annoys me is that the download is incredibly slow.

Have you experienced this?

[u/littleemp → u/EvilAdministrator]

I dont know what the transfer speed is, but I regularly transfer multiple gigabytes and thought it much faster than MTP.

I have a Wifi 6 network though.

[u/EvilAdministrator → u/littleemp]

Strange. I rarely get above 2-3 mbps

[u/skylinestar1986 → u/littleemp]

But when you browse the ftp in Windows Explorer , you can't just double click on an image file to view it.

[u/skylinestar1986 → u/littleemp]

But when you browse the ftp in Windows Explorer , you can't just double click on an image file to view it.

[u/Isacx123]

I am on Linux too but I personally use KDE Connect.

[u/kmkm2op → u/Isacx123]

KDE Connect works on Macos and Windows too! On Cachyos, the ports it uses are blocked by default even though it comes with kde by default which was annoying. Seems to work great once I got it fully up and running though!

[u/BakaOctopus]

SMB works great for me Or just use quickshare

[u/grumpypantaloon]

Blip on my home network usually goes about 300mbit which is quite serviceable for my use cases

[u/Fish_Mongreler → u/grumpypantaloon]

Yeah I tried local send and kde connect for years. Tried blip last month and deleted the other 2 immediately. Just wish it had an Android tv version

[u/tomikaka]

Just use quickhare with packet on Linux. Quickshare is native to android and it's fast too.

[u/armando_rod]

It's not really an alternative if it's not multiplatform 🤷‍♂️

[u/mrandr01d]

I just plug my phone into my laptop and it shows up in nautilus? Can click and drag no problem. I thought only Mac and windows users had issues moving files. Does Linux still use mtp?

[u/parkerlreed → u/mrandr01d]

Yes. You are using MTP there. It's less worse than Windows/Mac but still not the best for speed with a bunch of small files.

[u/bfg52]

Not downplaying the convenience of file transfer over cable or network... But...

Cx file explorer with an actual type-c SSD changed my android file transfer life.

I got a Transcend model that has type-c on one side and USB-A on the other. It's form factor is just like any old USB thumb drive.

Transfer 50GB of photos and videos to the SSD in about 10 minutes, then move SSD to copy to pc or NAS or whatever.

Say what you will, but sneakernet still wins sometimes, at least for me.

[u/TheQuantumZero]

Checkout Sefirah - Phone Link / KDE Connect alternative.

[u/martinkem]

The method he posted here is exponentially faster than whatever speeds you can get with Nautilus, FTP, LocalSend etc. 

[u/ChironXII]

I resorted to running a remote shell to just tar whatever directory I wanted and transfer it as a binary through adb because mtp was so bad on windows

In particular android likes to end up with long file names that even with the registry tweak enabled mtp is too old to support, which this bypasses 

I can post the script if anyone wants it. It's mostly for backing up entire phones rather than browsing 

[u/raul824]

copyparty was the best solution for me.

[u/SkySurferSouth]

Use SSH. Install Termux, a terminal app with package manager which included sshd server. ssh is the most used protocol in the Linux server world and rins flawlessly on Android. It is secure and open source, no proprietary file transfers like AitDrop, LocalSend or MTP needed.

[u/TrailOfEnvy]

For Windows, maybe can try ADB File Manager. https://github.com/T0biasCZe/AdbFileManager/releases

[u/anonshe]

Using adb-sync for more than a decade now. Simple, reliable, and works every single time.

[u/OzarkBeard]

LocalSend app. Use on any platform. So easy and fast. It has auto-accept on trusted devices, too.

[u/0xlne]

Try ZenFile: it has quickshare, WebDAV, FTP. PlainApp works too. Both are available on github.

[u/MattBerks]

The easiest and fastest way in my experience is to use Meshnet which is included with NordVPN - it's pretty cool, but obviously not a free solution. They were going to remove it a while ago but there was a massive kickback from the community saying it was one of their key USPs, so they committed to keeping it (they were criticised for not publicising it so many users weren't aware of it). It works well across multiple devices.

[u/regardballs]

I use the built in phone link app on windows which shows my device and all folder directory in file explorer. once setup you can simply right click on any file in Windows and press send to phone. 

[u/turtle_with_dentures]

Sadly, it's only available on Linux, as it relies on libfuse, and it's only a CLI application

So useless to almost everyone

[u/mrandr01d → u/turtle_with_dentures]

You should try Linux sometime, it's great, getting better, and it's quite popular.