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How to access/mount Android drive in Kubuntu 20.04 with other file manager than Dolphin?

br flag
cipricus

Answering this question I have found that Dolphin doesn't mount Android locations, it accesses them via separate KIO processes.

An effect of that is that other file managers are not able to see the Android drive in Plasma as they do in other desktops like Xfce, Gnome and others. I have tested Double Commander, Thunar and muCommander. None has access to Android drive, while that is accessible in Dolphin.

I'm not sure if the KIO process as alternative to MTP mount point is limited to Dolphin or it is enforced by Plasma as such.

Dolphin shows a mtp:/ address for the Android location, but opening that in Thunar or in other file managers doesn't do anything.

Double Commander doesn't see the phone I guess until it is accessed in the main file manager, but after that the phone location would appear in the list of drives. It does the same in KDE, only when clicking the drive it shows an error:

enter image description here

The same does Nautilus:

enter image description here

Clicking that in Thunar has no effect whatsoever.

How could the Android drive be accessed in Plasma outside Dolphin?

(I'm in Kubuntu 20.04.)

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Terrance avatar
id flag
Terrance
I use Thunar all the time to access my Android phone. Works without a problem. Did you make sure on your Android that you click `Allow` to give your computer permissions to access your phone?
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br flag
cipricus
@Terrance - I used Thunar outside Plasma and it mounted automatically the phone after doing what you say to do. But not in Plasma/Kubuntu. Are you using Plasma/Kubuntu? What version? By the way I have the answer now. I will post it just now.
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Terrance avatar
id flag
Terrance
Nope, I am not using Plasma/Kubuntu. It had too many issues for my tastes. I primarily use Xfce4 / Xubuntu. I really like a good looking DE that Plasma is, but it just didn't fit my needs. I've upvoted your answer below as I was using Dolphin for testing and without the `forcemount -u` I couldn't access my phone any more in Thunar.
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br flag
cipricus
@Terrance - as you see, this question is Kubuntu (hence Plasma) - specific.
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Terrance avatar
id flag
Terrance
I get that, mine was a comment originally on your comment of "Clicking that in Thunar has no effect whatsoever." in your question. And your title is accessing Android is something other than Dolphin. So, you might want to clean all this up because it is getting very confusing.
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br flag
cipricus
Do you mean that installing Dolphin in Xfce removes the normal non-plasma behavior of mounting Android to `/run/user/1000/gvfs/`?
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Terrance avatar
id flag
Terrance
No, it mounts it the same way in Xfce, in fact, I was never able to successfully browse the phone in Dolphin, but it made it so Thunar would no longer access the phone unless it was forced to unmount.
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br flag
cipricus

The idea is to mount the phone at some location with go-mtpfs and then access that with the other file managers.

Pasting from a different answer of mine:

Trying go-mtpfs /media/MyAndroid (no PPA needed anymore) I couldn't mount the Android drive on /media.

Instead it can be mounted in $HOME.

So, after creating ~/MyAndroid, in order to mount the Android drive, do:

go-mtpfs MyAndroid.

Don't forget to unmount with

fusermount -u MyAndroid

--- otherwise simply closing the terminal would make that folder inaccessible.

Launchers can be created for the two commands:

kate ~/.local/share/applications/mount-phone.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=go-mtpfs MyAndroid
Icon=phone
Name=Mount phone
NoDisplay=false
StartupNotify=false
Type=Application

kate ~/.local/share/applications/unmount-phone.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=fusermount -u MyAndroid
Icon=phone
Name=Unmount phone
NoDisplay=false
StartupNotify=false
Type=Application
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