From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.advocacy

Looking at this article <https://www.zdnet.com/article/transfer-photos-from-your-android-phone-to-your-windows-pc-here-are-5-easy-ways-to-do-it/>,
I’m surprised they didn’t mention the most powerful way to transfer
files between your PC and a connected Android device: using the
Android Debug Bridge tool (ADB), which is part of Google’s Android
developer SDK.

Without rooting, you can use this to read/write any part of the
phone’s storage that an ordinary user is allowed to access. For
example, the sound I like to use for alarms was originally extracted,
over a decade ago, from the system media area on an HTC Desire
(remember them?).

I see that the Android SDK tools are included in the standard package
repos in Debian and derivatives now, so they’re easy to install on
common Linux distros.

You can download and install them on Windows, I suppose (if you can
figure out the installation procedure). However, you’ll also need
something else: a special USB driver from Google. No idea why this is
needed on Windows, when it was never needed on Linux: surely after
over a decade of Android being in existence, Microsoft would have been
able to find and fix any relevant bugs in its USB stack by now.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.advocacy

On Tue, 4 Nov 2025 06:15:48 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

I’m surprised they didn’t mention the most powerful way to transfer
files between your PC and a connected Android device: using the Android
Debug Bridge tool (ADB), which is part of Google’s Android developer
SDK.

I plug the phone into a Linux box, accept the connection, and transfer the files. Why do I need the ADB?
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.advocacy

At 4 Nov 2025 07:35:09 GMT, rbowman <[email protected]> wrote:

On Tue, 4 Nov 2025 06:15:48 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

I’m surprised they didn’t mention the most powerful way to transfer files between your PC and a connected Android device: using the Android Debug Bridge tool (ADB), which is part of Google’s Android developer
SDK.

I plug the phone into a Linux box, accept the connection, and transfer the files. Why do I need the ADB?

I once had a ~5GByte video on my phone that wouldn't transfer
using that ptp stuff -- ended up using adb, which got the file.

I think there may be a 2 (or 4) GByte limit to what ptp can do...
--
-v ASUS TUF DASH F15 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3060 Mobile 6G
OS: Linux 6.14.0-35-generic D: Mint 22.2 DE: Xfce 4.18
NVIDIA: 510.47.03 Mem: 15.9G
"I have a rock garden. 3 of them died last week."
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From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.advocacy

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= <[email protected]d>wrote:

Looking at this article ><https://www.zdnet.com/article/transfer-photos-from-your-android-phone-to-your-windows-pc-here-are-5-easy-ways-to-do-it/>,

I’m surprised they didn’t mention the most powerful way to transfer
files between your PC and a connected Android device: using the
Android Debug Bridge tool (ADB), which is part of Google’s Android >developer SDK.

Without rooting, you can use this to read/write any part of the
phone’s storage that an ordinary user is allowed to access. For
example, the sound I like to use for alarms was originally extracted,
over a decade ago, from the system media area on an HTC Desire
(remember them?).

I see that the Android SDK tools are included in the standard package
repos in Debian and derivatives now, so they’re easy to install on
common Linux distros.

You can download and install them on Windows, I suppose (if you can
figure out the installation procedure). However, you’ll also need
something else: a special USB driver from Google. No idea why this is
needed on Windows, when it was never needed on Linux: surely after
over a decade of Android being in existence, Microsoft would have been
able to find and fix any relevant bugs in its USB stack by now.

adb works OK with my Xiaomi smartphone connected to a Raspberry Pi4 4 GB.
adb shell
You just have to remember to allow access from / on the phone too.
Just downloaded some pictures I took with the phone,
huge file sizes, all nicely in one directory.



--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.advocacy

2025-11-04 06:15 [email protected]d:

I’m surprised they didn’t mention the most powerful way to
transfer files between your PC and a connected Android device:
using the Android Debug Bridge tool (ADB), which is part of
Google’s Android developer SDK.

Personally, because it doesn't require any cable plugging, I like
to use network-local file transfer via network. There are already
many applications for this, even many which run in the web
browser, for example: https://web.localsend.org
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.advocacy

On Tue, 04 Nov 2025 11:23:45 GMT, Jan Panteltje wrote:

adb works OK with my Xiaomi smartphone connected to a Raspberry Pi4
4 GB.

Of course. ;)

Just downloaded some pictures I took with the phone, huge file
sizes, all nicely in one directory.

I like to use the “pull -a” option, to ensure timestamps are preserved
as well.

Another thing you can do is, backup the .apk files for the apps you
have installed. These are kept in a directory with execute-only
permissions, so you cannot do a simple directory listing: but you can
use the list-packages function to get details of all installed
packages, *along with the paths to the corresponding .apk files*. And
then you can pull these files back to your host PC.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2