Hi.

I recently had cause to try getting some photos off my phone on to my Pi5.
I was able to see the root folder on the phone when allowing PTP transport
on the phone, but was unable to navigate to any of the sub-folders.

Presumably this is a permissions issue, but as the subject is somewhat
arcane to me, can anyone advise how I can get in to the DCIM folder on the phone?

This was the same whether the phone was plugged in via USB cable, or
connected by Bluetooth.

Any advice gratefully received.
--
Brian Howlett
----------------------------------------------
All electronic components run on smoke.
If you let the smoke out, they stop working...

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Brian Howlett wrote:

Any advice gratefully received.

I have an ftp server app on my phone, never had any rights issues. There
are free ones.

-jw-
--
And now for something completely different...

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 10/05/2026 22:40, Brian Howlett wrote:

I recently had cause to try getting some photos off my phone on to my Pi5.
I was able to see the root folder on the phone when allowing PTP transport
on the phone, but was unable to navigate to any of the sub-folders.

On my Android devices (Sony phone and Samsung tablet, both Android 16)
the I select "File transfer" rather than "PTP", and I can navigate
anywhere. ISTRT the required setting on an earlier device was "MTP".

PTP is a rather more specialized (i.e. limited) protocol and seems to be designed to enable the PC to use the phone as a digital camera -- you'd
have to be running something on the PC that understood cameras rather
than a general-purpose file manager.

--
Cheers,
Daniel.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Mon, 11 May 2026 11:14:42 +0100, Daniel James wrote:

On my Android devices (Sony phone and Samsung tablet, both Android
16) the I select "File transfer" rather than "PTP", and I can
navigate anywhere. ISTRT the required setting on an earlier device
was "MTP".

PTP is a rather more specialized (i.e. limited) protocol and seems
to be designed to enable the PC to use the phone as a digital camera
-- you'd have to be running something on the PC that understood
cameras rather than a general-purpose file manager.

I thought PTP was the earlier protocol, while MTP was the later
generalization:

PTP -- transfer only pictures
MTP -- ?M? for media -- transfer other stuff, not just pictures

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-05-10 at 18:40 ADT, Brian Howlett <news-spamtrap@brianhowlett.me.uk> wrote:

Hi.

I recently had cause to try getting some photos off my phone on to my Pi5.
I was able to see the root folder on the phone when allowing PTP transport on the phone, but was unable to navigate to any of the sub-folders.

Presumably this is a permissions issue, but as the subject is somewhat arcane to me, can anyone advise how I can get in to the DCIM folder on the phone?

This was the same whether the phone was plugged in via USB cable, or connected by Bluetooth.

Any advice gratefully received.

I have termux on my phone, which lets you use ssh to log in to the phone
from your laptop, and also lets you use scp to transfer files back and
forth.

termux' sshd is not run by default, but you can either run it from the
termux window or you could put a call to it in the shell's init file.

I find it much nicer to ssh in and cd around than to hunt using a gui file manager, but YMMV.

Jim

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Brian Howlett <news-spamtrap@brianhowlett.me.uk> wrote:

Hi.

I recently had cause to try getting some photos off my phone on to my Pi5.
I was able to see the root folder on the phone when allowing PTP transport on the phone, but was unable to navigate to any of the sub-folders.

Presumably this is a permissions issue, but as the subject is somewhat arcane to me, can anyone advise how I can get in to the DCIM folder on the phone?

This was the same whether the phone was plugged in via USB cable, or connected by Bluetooth.

Any advice gratefully received.

I normally use https://localsend.org/ as a simple way to move files to and
from mobile devices. It's an app you install at both ends (there's a Linux-arm64 release that should work on Pis), then you just select the files you want via the GUI at the sending end, approve the transfer at the
receiving end, and they are transferred. It doesn't need any special networking setup, it figures that out itself.

As it uses the phone's existing wifi connection it's typically faster than using Bluetooth or USB 2 on the phone.

Theo

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-05-10, Brian Howlett <news-spamtrap@brianhowlett.me.uk> wrote:

Hi.

I recently had cause to try getting some photos off my phone on to my Pi5.
I was able to see the root folder on the phone when allowing PTP transport on the phone, but was unable to navigate to any of the sub-folders.

Presumably this is a permissions issue, but as the subject is somewhat arcane to me, can anyone advise how I can get in to the DCIM folder on the phone?

This was the same whether the phone was plugged in via USB cable, or connected by Bluetooth.

Any advice gratefully received.

If none of the other options suggested so far by others work, if
your phone runs Android you might be able to use the Android
Debug Bridge (adb). It takes a bunch of key presses to enable
USB debug access on the phone--and disable it when finished--but
it does provide non-root access to the phone's file tree.

--
Robert Riches
spamtrap42@jacob21819.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 10/05/2026 22:40, Brian Howlett wrote:

Hi.

I recently had cause to try getting some photos off my phone on to my Pi5.
I was able to see the root folder on the phone when allowing PTP transport
on the phone, but was unable to navigate to any of the sub-folders.

Presumably this is a permissions issue, but as the subject is somewhat
arcane to me, can anyone advise how I can get in to the DCIM folder on the phone?

This was the same whether the phone was plugged in via USB cable, or connected by Bluetooth.

Any advice gratefully received.

I use mtp to talk to my phone. No issues

--
?Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of
other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance"

- John K Galbraith



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-05-11, Jim Diamond <zsd@jdvb.ca> wrote:

On 2026-05-10 at 18:40 ADT, Brian Howlett <news-spamtrap@brianhowlett.me.uk> wrote:

Hi.

I recently had cause to try getting some photos off my phone on to my Pi5. >> I was able to see the root folder on the phone when allowing PTP transport >> on the phone, but was unable to navigate to any of the sub-folders.

Presumably this is a permissions issue, but as the subject is somewhat
arcane to me, can anyone advise how I can get in to the DCIM folder on the >> phone?

This was the same whether the phone was plugged in via USB cable, or
connected by Bluetooth.

Any advice gratefully received.

I have termux on my phone, which lets you use ssh to log in to the phone
from your laptop, and also lets you use scp to transfer files back and
forth.

termux' sshd is not run by default, but you can either run it from the
termux window or you could put a call to it in the shell's init file.

I find it much nicer to ssh in and cd around than to hunt using a gui file manager, but YMMV.

Indeed. Even nicer is using sshfs to mount the phones files into your
own work space on a the pi or, e.g. on my linux desktop.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/linux-unix/how-to-use-sshfs-on-linux/



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 12/05/2026 00:09, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

PTP is a rather more specialized (i.e. limited) protocol and seems
to be designed to enable the PC to use the phone as a digital
camera -- you'd have to be running something on the PC that
understood cameras rather than a general-purpose file manager.

I thought PTP was the earlier protocol, while MTP was the later generalization:

Yes, indeed.

I don't think that contradicts what I wrote. PTP was the earlier
protocol, specifically for cameras, which was later generalized to
support full file transfer as a replacement for USB mass-storage.

Sorry for any confusion.

--
Cheers,
Daniel.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)