How do I transfer files from Android cellphone

[Karl Auer]

On Sat, 2019-08-10 at 18:14 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:
> I have an Android cellphone that I connect to my UbuntuMATE 18.04
> computer via USB tethering, and, use that for accessing the WWW on
> that computer.
> 
> On my cellphone, I have a number of image files (screenshots) that I
> want to transfer to the computer.
> 
> Rather than attaching each file to a gmail email message composed on
> the cellphone, and, sending a copy of the file, for downloading to
> the computer, how do I direcly transfer the files?

Hey Bret

The phone can be different USB devices - it can be a modem or a memory
stick, a "media device" (MTP) or a camera (PTP). Some phone can be even
more things. Generally you can choose in Settings what you want the
connected phone to be; the commonest default is for it to be a memory
stick.

If you use the phone as a modem (USB tethering), you can't
simultaneously use it as any other USB device (except that it might be
able to charge at the same time).

So provided you can do without the Internet for a bit, go into Settings
and turn off the USB tethering. The phone will typically revert to
being a memory stick by default. It might give you other options, like
MTP and PTP, just leave them be. Mine works fine for USB file transfer
with "MTP" selected.

Depending on your Linux setup, when you turn off tethering the phone
should show up just as if you had plugged in a USB memory stick. If it
doesn't, try unplugging and re-plugging the USB cable. Or do whatever
you usually do to mount and use the contents of a USB memory stick.

When you are done, turn tethering back on to get back to the Internet.

Regards, K.

PS: Just for fun, try plugging USB devices into the phone - most
Android phones will happily recognise mice, keyboards, USB memory
sticks and so on. You might need an adapter as most phones have USB-C
or micro-USB rather than the USB-A on most PC devices.

-- 
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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

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