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whitepowderma

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 18, 2020
12
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This is a Mac OS question with a Samsung phone involved. I just bought the S21 Ultra. In my previous Galaxy phones, I've always had my music on microSD cards. However, with the S21 Ultra, I bought the one with 512GB so that I can transfer music files to it. I haven't had to transfer any files from my Mac to my phone in years so I'm not familiar with it.

I want to transfer about 200GB of music files from my Mac running Big Sur to the S21 Ultra. Samsung's website says to use an app called "Android File Transfer" to do it https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00086603/

Other people have told me to just connect the phone to my Mac and I will be able to do it without any software (using Finder). Which is correct?
 
Just use Finder, since you don't need to install anything.

Hmmm... might need to use the file transfer program, as even Apple says to use it for file transfers (been ages as well since I had to do Android <-> Mac).

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205063 (Help note if going from Android, but assuming applies going to Android).
 
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Thank you for the replies. I'm going to do it in about a week and I'll use Android File Transfer to do it.
 
Wait... do Android phones not show up as external USB storage devices anymore?

That is (was?) one of the nice things about an Android phone... you can plug it in and just drag files to it. USB File Transfer is a built-in function.

You shouldn't need "software" to copy MP3 files to a device...

:p
 
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You shouldn't need "software" to copy MP3 files to a device...
That was my thinking as well, however...

Some searching, and it appears Androids now use Media Transfer Protocol for USB, which Mac does not support (Windows supports this as that's their home-grown standard). Also seems like USB Mass Storage mode has been removed from Android.

So, a file transfer program seems to be needed.
 
I found out after some research that you must use software to do it. The app Android File Transfer is very old and has transfer size limitations. The best free app to use is called openmtp https://openmtp.ganeshrvel.com as it does not have size limitations and has a great UI. Thanks for all of the help folks.
 
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That was my thinking as well, however...

Some searching, and it appears Androids now use Media Transfer Protocol for USB, which Mac does not support (Windows supports this as that's their home-grown standard). Also seems like USB Mass Storage mode has been removed from Android.

So, a file transfer program seems to be needed.

Gotcha... thanks!

:)
 
Android File Transfer (and MTP) in generally aren't really good from my experience... I'd rather transfer a big amont/size of files via network. If you have a good Wi-Fi or USB-C ethernet adapter (that you can connect to the S21 Ultra) it shouldn't be a huge deal.
 
So I ended up doing it a different way. I uploaded all of my music on my Mac to Google Drive, then I used an app called Astro File Manager on my Android to copy the music to my Music folder on my phone. It took a while but it works great this way. Thanks for all of the responses.
 
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Yeah, I've seen the cloud options as well, but as you mentioned can take a while. And requires sufficient cloud space.

Along those lines, not sure if this is possible, wonder if one can create a server connection from Mac to Android and drag/drop? Back in the stone age, I had a couple of iPhone apps that used that method to move data to the app (Finder > Go > Connect to Server). Now, those apps had their own AFP (no longer Apple supported) server builtin, Android would need some sort of Samba support.

ADD:

I uploaded all of my music on my Mac to Google Drive

Just a thinking out loud to the world: Does Android have ability to mass move files vs. iOS "sharing" pain? Probably would not have sped things up, but, wondering if can use Google Drive app, select all, move to Music folder.
 
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