How to access the folder(s) of Google's Pixel 6a mobile phone from Ubuntu 22.04?

Sun Bear

11/16/23, 11:51 PM

After plugging Google's Pixel 6a into Ubuntu 22.04 via usb c:

$ lsusb
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 18d1:4ee1 Google Inc. Nexus/Pixel Device (MTP)

A partition called Pixel 6a also appears in the left menu of Nautilus. However, clicking on that results in this error message after some time:

How may I access this mobile phone's folders? It is using Andriod 13 as OS.

I came across a similar question for Pixel 4 on Ubuntu 20.04.2 and tried its accepted answer but that did not work.

$ sudo mkdir -pv /media/Pixel6a
mkdir: created directory '/media/Pixel6a'
$ sudo chown $USER:$USER /media/Pixel6a/ -vv
changed ownership of '/media/Pixel6a/' from root:root to me:me
$ ls -la /media/
total 16
drwxr-xr-x   4 root   root   4096 Nov 17 07:21 .
drwxr-xr-x  20 root   root   4096 Oct 24 13:04 ..
drwxr-x---+  4 root   root   4096 Nov 17 06:56 me
drwxr-xr-x   2 master master 4096 Nov 17 07:21 Pixel6a
$ sudo apt install jmtpfs
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
jmtpfs is already the newest version (0.5-3).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 16 not upgraded.
$ jmtpfs /media/Pixel6a/
Device 0 (VID=18d1 and PID=4ee1) is a Google Inc Nexus/Pixel (MTP).
PTP_ERROR_IO: failed to open session, trying again after resetting USB interface
LIBMTP libusb: Attempt to reset device
LIBMTP PANIC: failed to open session on second attempt
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'MtpErrorCantOpenDevice'
  what():  Can't open device
Aborted (core dumped)

On Nautilus, the same error msg (as shown above) is also seen.

644

1 + 1

nautilus

mtp

google

22.04

Terrance

11/17/23, 4:52 AM

To go with @Nmath comment above, and I just tried this out in Nautilus and in 22.04, did you make sure that the phone's USB Preference is set to `File Transfer / Android Auto`? Once I had my Pixel 6 Pro set to that Nautilus didn't have any issues accessing the files on my phone at all. You might also want to check your USB cable.

Score:2

Ubuntu

Sun Bear

11/17/23, 6:43 AM

Thanks @Terrance, @Nmath, and to this Youtube video, I learnt that I had to enable an Andriod phone feature to solve my issue.

Speaking to the phone, I said "Hey Google, USB Preference". Thereafter, the screen appeared and I selected File Transfer / Android Auto and Nautilus immediately accessed the Pixel 6a device.

to -->

+ 1

karel

11/17/23, 7:46 AM

Please remember to accept your own answer after 24 hours.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: How to access the folder(s) of Google's Pixel 6a mobile phone from Ubuntu 22.04?

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