INTERACT FORUM

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: Tip for Android handheld sync  (Read 1012 times)

rn701

  • Junior Woodchuck
  • **
  • Posts: 70
Tip for Android handheld sync
« on: May 26, 2019, 08:10:07 am »

After years of frustration with slowness, inconsistent behavior and general weirdness, I finally got handheld sync to work fast and reliably.

Instead of using my phone's "file transfer" mode for usb connection, I tried "developer" mode. Works like a champ.

Another tip. If you've had many failed attempts and/or your player software is missing tracks and/or playlists aren't getting updated, try resetting the Android media database. Settings > Apps and notifications > App info > select Show system from three dot menu > scroll down to Media Storage > Storage > Clear Data. Restart the phone and Android will rebuild it. It will take a while. It also resets custom notifications, but oh well.

(This is on a Motorola phone with near stock Android 8. Other phones may call it something different.)
Logged

BryanC

  • MC Beta Team
  • Citizen of the Universe
  • *****
  • Posts: 2678
Re: Tip for Android handheld sync
« Reply #1 on: May 26, 2019, 09:39:58 am »

Developer mode shouldn't change any of the file transfer protocols (it will still use MTP), all it will do is enable android debugging (ADB) access from the host computer.

What can speed up file transfer substantially (and is unfortunately outside the scope of MC) is to enable ADB (as you have already done) and then use an adb push (with --sync parameter to save time):

Code: [Select]
adb push --sync /fromhere /sdcard/music
I've seen speedups of anywhere from 10-30x using ADB instead of MTP file transfer (on Linux, the speedup is not quite as obvious on Windows).

My old workflow was to use MC handheld sync to sync to a local cache directory and then use the above command to actually transfer the files to my device. Now I use syncthing in combination with the cache directory to sync my files over wifi.
Logged

rn701

  • Junior Woodchuck
  • **
  • Posts: 70
Re: Tip for Android handheld sync
« Reply #2 on: May 29, 2019, 04:04:53 pm »

Note: I misspoke. The mode on my phone is called 'software installation' mode, not 'developer'.
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up