MTP for Mac is an Android file transfer driver for macOS

A few years ago, I wanted to copy photos from my Android phone to Mac. I connected it to the Mac by USB cable. And. And nothing happened!

The same story happened to many Android and Mac users. But what is the reason? It turns out that macOS (or formerly Mac OS X) knows nothing about MTP (Media Transfer Protocol). That is the protocol that USB devices, including Android ones, use to transfer files.

Google provides an application called Android File Transfer. The only functionality it has is to copy files by MTP to Mac or visa verse. This application is famously known for its instability. Copying a few files can easily turn into a disaster, even with the bar set pretty low (in fact, the lowest it can be) in terms of core features. Even a simple preview of what is available to copy is missing. Let’s say you want to have a look at the photos on a high-resolution display. No. It’s impossible with Android File Transfer either!

Uploading files to the cloud then to the phone or visa versa is too much work and consumes too much time. Moreover, we live in a world with giant corporations controlling, mining, selling, and sometimes irresponsibly disclosing your data to third parties. Probably uploading files to the cloud and downloading them on Mac just isn’t something you want to do.

By this time, I already had many years of experience in filesystems development as the lead-developer of Paragon’s NTFS for Mac, Ext for Mac, and other kernel software for macOS. So that how I could solve this problem was clear for me.

MTP for Mac

MTP for Mac is an Android file transfer solution.

The main goals for this product were:

• Use native macOS interfaces, e.g. Finder or any application on Mac.
• No actions on Mac should be required (connected device should appear immediately in the system).

That is why there are no pictures with the product’s user-interfaces. Cause they do not exist. It lets you use the native macOS applications of your choice.

The only actions required to have files from Android available on Mac are:

• Connect Mac with Android by USB cable.
• Enable File transfer on the phone (that is inevitable for security reasons).

Although all these requirements were quite idealistic and very strict, we managed to satisfy them all. To solve such a task, one has to have a full bag of tricks. And we have them all.

The heart of the product is a filesystem driver of MTP protocol. On phone connection, it negotiates with an Android device and adds it as one more drive to your system (or more if you have SD cards on the device). Since the device is “mounted” to your filesystem, all your Mac applications have access to files and directories on it.

Now you are not limited by just copying files in and out. You can listen to music that is on your phone on Mac. Browse photos, or even Photoshop them directly on your Android. Edit any file. Clean up your files and directories. Or maybe you are a musician and recorded some interesting sounds on your phone. Load them right into your favorite sequencer directly. And yes, you don’t need an internet connection!

Sounds unrealistic? Just try it!

What is MTP

As already said, MTP stands for Media Transfer Protocol. That is a protocol over USB that lets two MTP compatible devices to interchange information about the filesystem. Lists files on the connected device. Get the descriptions of the file. Request and send the data of the file. In general, all functions your application does with files and folders.

Since Android version 3, that protocol was chosen by Google for file transfer from and to devices.

But origins of MTP were not in Google. This protocol was developed in Microsoft as an extension over protocol PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol). It was used for the picture transfer from scanners and some other devices. With the MTP extension, it was generalized to transfer any files and folders. And the main goal for this protocol was the upload of music files on different MP3 players. Later Google added its extensions to this protocol that let them use it already as a complete filesystem.

Ether Google and Microsoft is hard could be called friends of Apple. Probably this is the reason why Apple hasn’t implemented the MTP driver in macOS.

What is a filesystem

As far as we talk about files and folders(directories), the place for their leaving is a Filesystem. There are a few variants of what is a filesystem. It can be a filesystem on disk, a network filesystem, or like MTP some virtual filesystem (there are plenty of them, and they may provide different structured information in form of files and folders).

It does not matter what a filesystem is, it is organized as a Kernel extension (or sometimes called driver), something like a plug-in for macOS kernel. It extends the capabilities of macOS to understand different types of filesystems, e.g. APFS, HFS, MTP, etc.

Recently Apple declared Kernel-extensions obsolete. But as a matter of fact, it’s the only method to implement Filesystem driver by now. In further versions of macOS, Apple should provide new interfaces. But till this moment all filesystems old and new ones will live the same way.

Advantages

The advantages of accessing your files on Android by filesystem driver are:

• Automatic mount of filesystems on Android to macOS as the drives (no actions on Mac required from you).
• Files on mounted Android devices become first-class citizens on macOS. So any application can work with them as with files on a local filesystem. You can browse them in Finder, edit in Photoshop, etc.
• Drivers are the nearest software level to hardware. That provides the maximum data transfer speed that is possible.

Disadvantages

If this solution has disadvantages? As each solution it has. You can’t just drag and drop it in the Application folder, but run the standard installer instead. That set up the driver in the system and will do all the necessary things required for work. But this a small price for such convenience.

Download

Currently, MTP for Mac is available for FREE!

You can download it on the product page: https://www.hyperintegrate.com/products/mtp-for-mac

Just download and try how convenient it is!