A little background will probably help here; I've long been frustrated that if you have your music in the Google Music app and pin it to your device, Google obfuscate it in such a way that other applications can't access that music. Why is this annoying? Because it forces you to make choices you probably wouldn't otherwise and can end up with you having to clog up your internal memory with all your music when it would make far more sense to have it all on your external SD card where all apps can access it. Of course Google made another security decision that any app that had data on the SD card had it in it's own folder, almost completely scuppering the concept of having a shared Music folder on an external SD.
So I came up with a plan;
- When I purchase new music, I'll drop it into a folder on my laptop and Google Music Manager will sync that up to my account so it's available in the cloud and as a backup. No fuss there.
- BitTorrent Sync will then take care of syncing it to a folder on my phone's SD card and any other devices that take my fancy (can't have it in a folder on the root of the SD card called Music - Google won't allow apps to store they files that way so it goes in something like /com.bittorrentsync/data/Music etc).
- Create a symlink from the internal Music folder to the bittorrent Music folder and Hey Presto!
My initial expectation was that all apps *apart* from Google Music would be able to see those files and for the time being, I would have been happy enough with that - better that 99% of potential apps work nicely than only 1%.
So I've done all the above - I had to use FolderMount to do the symlink as I'm not a linux pro
However, the odd thing is that the exact opposite of my expectation has happened. Google Music can see the files (when you set "Downloaded only" in the Google Music app), other music apps can't! So far I've only tried DoubleTwist and DJay2 but neither can see anything and neither have a setting to change where they scan for media.
So I guess my question is - is it even possible to have all apps get their Music from a single resource on the external SD card, whether using a symlink or otherwise? Is there anything I could have done better? Any other advice?
EDIT: I'm running Android 4.4.4 on an LG G3 which is rooted to allow me to run FolderMount
EDIT 2: Thanks to this page: https://www.doubletwist.com/help/qu...nges-to-sd-card-support-in-android-44-kitkat/
I thought I had everything working. The DoubleTwist page describes how to completely clean the AMS database and force a reindex. One reboot and a few minutes of waiting and all apps have access to my symlinked folder!!! However, Google Music and DoubleTwist are not showing quite the same number of tracks and adding new tracks to the sync'd folder doesn't seems to force and update of the media DB.
So, is this lofty goal even possible? I find it very odd that Android would have such a security requirement that essentially made it impossible for apps to be able to access a centralised resource of music files on the external SD card.
Related
Hello, I have an AT&T HTC ONE X running AOKP Jellybean. I currently have 1.64gb of internal storage available on the phone and about 4gb on the "external" storage. The phone is claimed to have 16gb of total storage. I believe they just partition the card into two sections to create internal and external storage.
My music files account for exactly 1.55gb of storage on the external portion of the SD. I have been attempting to move that music into the 1.65gb of free space on the internal portion. I have been unable to do this. Most folders are read only and while I can use root explorer to move files into these folders, or create new ones, I am unable to get my syncing program to access the folders because they are technically read only. I have a program that syncs all my music files in the cloud so I can share multiple devices.
Some of the folders in the internal SD are not read only and I can actually move files into them, but for whatever reason, these same folders wont sync properly with my program. The program (foldersync) will see the folder and claim to be downloading music to the folder, but nothing appears. And other folders which are not read only, won't evcen appear in the selection list to choose from within the foldersync app. I've even tried storing the music in a non read only folder on the internal SD and creating a link to it thats on the external SD to trick the foldersync program. The trick works and everything syncs perfectly, but the amount of available storage on the EXTERNAL SD is affected when everything appears to be on the internal.
All I'm trying to do is sync some stuff to the internal SD with the foldersync application, can anyone tell me how to do this? Haha sorry for the wall of text!
Also, I thought about using Google Music but it appears that Google Music stores everything on the external SD and there are no options in the app to change it.
Closed use proper Q&A section
I would love to simply stream all my music when I'm driving, but this is quickly eating up my data plan. Therefore, I like to save a lot of albums "On Device" to listen to later. But Google Music All-Access apparently has no way to specify where these files are stored, and they're quickly filling up my internal SD memory.
So, I bought a 64G SD card, but recently found out that it was wasted money as Google All Access has no way of saving the "On Device" files there.
Has anyone found a solution to this? I've found methods that work for Google Play Music PRIOR to the All Access upgrade, but nothing since that point (about a week ago).
I'm surprised there aren't more people complaining about this, but maybe I'm just one of the few that would like to play my music - LOTS of it - without the need to be connected to the Internet.
Any help?
I just dragged and dropped from my computer to external SD card.
I would guess that you can copy and paste the files if you want to do it all on the phone ? I realise that you might have to use a different music app if the one you use now doesn't "see" them, but that shouldn't be too bad ?
Did you try changing the storage path from internal sd to external sd? This can be done by going to settings and storage.
Sent from my Micromax A116
techpick said:
Did you try changing the storage path from internal sd to external sd? This can be done by going to settings and storage.
Sent from my Micromax A116
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
System (Phone) Settings? Won't allow me to change it.("Move to SD Card" option is disabled).
There is no setting like that in the All-Access program.
Here's how to do it.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/com..._i_have_my_downloads_from_google_play/ca5rxuh
OhMrBigshot said:
Here's how to do it.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/com..._i_have_my_downloads_from_google_play/ca5rxuh
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been pulling my hair out trying to get a symlink set up. I'm getting a dreaded "link failed: Operation not permitted" error.
I believe this might be because of the file system on my SD card? It's exFAT... could that be the issue?
You can give this a try
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYFw9bEAzM8
No credit to me, just ran across it and tried it.
ddschmidt said:
You can give this a try
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYFw9bEAzM8
No credit to me, just ran across it and tried it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You you could try the Song Spout program.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=44198180#post44198180
http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/0...hack-for-sd-card-support-a-download-link-too/
workaround
If you downgrade your version of play music to 5.1 you get save to SD card support that they removed in 5.2. All you have to do is download activity launcher, or use the built in one from Apex or other launcher of the sort, and exapnd the play music activities and then find the one that has ui.something with sd in in and then choose it and run the activity. It lets you choose device storage or SD and i confirmed it works. I cant take credit i found the fix in this article, kind of.. haha
http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/0...hack-for-sd-card-support-a-download-link-too/
Im on an S4 unlocked SGH-I337 running ATT jellybean 4.3
I recently bought a Class 10 Sandisk SD Card to increase my storage on my skyrocket.
Initially I thought I would use it to store all my music and free up space on the device. What I am finding is that my PC Music Players (WMP, MusicMonkey) just dont seem able to synch to the external SD Card. They synch no problem to my device, but I get constant errors and freeze ups when trying to synch to the external SD Card. So it doesnt seem useful for music storage.
Then I saw that its very hard to store apps to the device, and I think I need special apps that let me save and run apps from there.
So what good is having the SD Card? Does anyone have suggestions of other ways I can make use of this to better manage the internal storage space on my phone?
lirong said:
I recently bought a Class 10 Sandisk SD Card to increase my storage on my skyrocket.
Initially I thought I would use it to store all my music and free up space on the device. What I am finding is that my PC Music Players (WMP, MusicMonkey) just dont seem able to synch to the external SD Card. They synch no problem to my device, but I get constant errors and freeze ups when trying to synch to the external SD Card. So it doesnt seem useful for music storage.
Then I saw that its very hard to store apps to the device, and I think I need special apps that let me save and run apps from there.
So what good is having the SD Card? Does anyone have suggestions of other ways I can make use of this to better manage the internal storage space on my phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are lots of other apps you could use instead. Me personally I never use any music player syncing, I copy the music manually in explorer.
lingowistico said:
There are lots of other apps you could use instead. Me personally I never use any music player syncing, I copy the music manually in explorer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
Even started using Beyond Compare (or any folder comparison tool) to have a better view of what's already on my phone
I have too much music for my external sd card capacity
lingowistico said:
There are lots of other apps you could use instead. Me personally I never use any music player syncing, I copy the music manually in explorer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A number of people have mentioned that. What I dont understand is the following: when I use the player to synch, it will automatically figure out which are the new songs in the library and synch them.
When you do a manual copy and paste, unless I keep track of whats new and what needs to be copied, how do I make sure to only copy the new songs instead of having duplicates of everything or having to re-copy the entire library each time? Is there some setting that only copies new files or something like that?
lirong said:
When you do a manual copy and paste, unless I keep track of whats new and what needs to be copied, how do I make sure to only copy the new songs instead of having duplicates of everything or having to re-copy the entire library each time? Is there some setting that only copies new files or something like that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It should give you a message that says something like "SongXYZ.mp3 already exists; Do you want to Overwrite, Keep Both, Discard" when you try to paste in a file that already exists.
lingowistico said:
There are lots of other apps you could use instead. Me personally I never use any music player syncing, I copy the music manually in explorer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mrfeuss said:
It should give you a message that says something like "SongXYZ.mp3 already exists; Do you want to Overwrite, Keep Both, Discard" when you try to paste in a file that already exists.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right but is there any way to set that as a default on a batch of 700 songs, of which only 10 may be new? Obviously cant click on that one at a time.
Sorry I know this is basic stuff, but appreciate the guidance...
lirong said:
Right but is there any way to set that as a default on a batch of 700 songs, of which only 10 may be new? Obviously cant click on that one at a time.
Sorry I know this is basic stuff, but appreciate the guidance...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you're doing it from a Windows computer it'll say something like "Do this for the next xx conflicts" I think.
Google Music is great, but by default it wants to save all your music onto your internal SD, which in my case is way too small. I have over 30 GB of music that I keep on my phone and I want it synchronized with GooglePlay.
So the way we make this work is we create a link from the internal music storage folder to one on the external SD.
Some root browsers/explorers call this a "shortcut" but I use Root Explorer v3, which in my opinion is much easier.
You must have root to do this.
First, use Root Explorer to go into your external SD and create a folder, you can call it whatever you like. I used "GoogleMusic"
Next, create a folder underneath it called "files" and then long-press on it and choose the option to "link to this folder"
Next, browse to the Google Music internal storage directory (/data/data/com.google.android.music/files) and delete it (you may want to move the files to your new "files" directory first)
Then, click on the "create link" button to link to the files directory on your external SD.
Works like a charm for me.
Keep in mind these MP3s will be stored using Google's numeric naming convention, so they will really only be useful for Google Music. If you want to use the files for other players you can remove the .nomedia file from the directory with the MP3s in it.
Most of my info cam from a good write-up here on how to do it on an S3 running CM10:
http://forums.androidcentral.com/sp...e-all-google-play-music-external-sd-card.html
For the notoriously lazy such as myself, another method of getting it done is to use the Xposed framework module Music2SD.
Your method works great, as I've done it in the past, but for compulsive rom-switchers, the framework method is way quicker. This is still a nice writeup.
Hey guys, new here, hope it's right to post this here and not in my device's section but it's probably pretty empty in there.. Anyways, i have a very strange problem with my storage access where apps can't properly see contents in my storage (both internal and sd card) meaning the following: apps know folders exist and that space is taken up, but they seem to be unable to actually read or write files somehow. For example the storage tab in the settings shows how much space is free but the categories like pictures, music etc files show 0 bites, except for apps, that section shows up fine. Another example: fx file explorer can't show the amount of used space in the general overview or the folder information tab. But when i actually go into a folder it does show how much space is used and how much is free. I can open a music file in the built in fx music player but when i try to open in an external app it cant play it, shows its at e.g. 116:27:01 out of 5:52 actual play time and that the media format may not be supported. I'd post screenshots but i cant actually make any as the system cant save them.
I have tried restarting, even had a security update from before a few days that i was to lazy to install so i did that, still no change. I also tried removing the sd card to no avail. Since the google play services were using up alot of battery i tried deleting cache, data and even updates for both them and the play store but it seems that this was just another symptom and not the cause. So i think the culprit might be the whatsapp beta version 2.19.365 which crashed at the splash screen for most of it's users. I somehow managed to update it but the problems started when i tried opening it so i don't see what else would be the culprit. I've already contacted their support but tbh i don't ecxpect much help from them.
I'm on an unrooted Honor 7x with Emui 9.1 (based on Android 9).
Does anybody have any idea on what i might try except for a factory reset? I would really like to avoid doing that.
I thsnk everybody who took their time to read and maybe even answer this. Hope your day is going better. Cheers