Question making MTP work

[rholme]

Have a Galaxy A145G and cannot get MTP work. Wife's phone is older android and works fine - sharing files with computers.
I have enabled developer mode and set the default USB configuration to transferring files, also enabled USB debugging (not sure needed latter)
I tried tapping on the charging icon (only there for a couple seconds) quickly and nothing happens.
I know the computer supports MTP fine as my wife's phone lets me see the files after telling the phone to ALLOW.

I can find nothing anywhere on the phone to tell it to enable MTP when I connect the USB cable.
I see it could be the USB does not support it (saw somewhere), but suspect that is not it.

My wife's USB cable has a different phone-side connector.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Have you tried borrowing your wife's USB cable, since you know it works?

 

[smvim]

This suggestion only applies if your wife does NOT also have a Samsung phone and you're using a Windows PC.
Have you tried installing the Samsung Driver?

https://developer.samsung.com/android-usb-driver

USB has devolved into a real finicky standard, so it's no longer very 'Universal'. If her phone is from a different manufacturer, her phone may not require a USB driver to be manually installed (i.e. it's able to use the Windows default USB firmware, or Windows was able to install the required driver from a cab file or online). But Windows often requires a driver when initially connecting an external device so try installing the Samsung driver first, then try connecting your Galaxy phone.
Or are you using a Mac?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! When you connect the phone to the computer via USB and swipe down the notification panel, do you see a USB notification? If so, what happens if you tap it?

 

[rholme]

OK, I use linux not windows OR mac. Both computers (linux) work fine with wife's phone.
Her phone is an older android also purchased from Samsung (my old one died first).
My phone has a different physical plug to the USB so cannot try her cable.
The software on the computer is fine, it is the phone side not enabling (even though - the developer menu for the USB says it is).
And YES I have rebooted the phone a couple times to be sure it is not a startup problem.

And I have tried to tap on the notification that the phone is plugged in and getting battery charged (I have to be fast to do this as it is only up for a few seconds). Nothing happens there either.

Giving up. It is either the
cable (1 person suggested a cable thatONLY charges) = makes no sense for the manufacturer to do IMHO
phone (software) - weird as heck, but this just is not worth it

 

[B. Diddy]

I wouldn't give up just yet. There are cables that are designed only for charging (i.e., they don't have the wiring for data transfer), and regular cables can also fail due to faulty data transfer wiring. If you don't have any extra cables lying around that are compatible, then see if you can borrow one from a friend, or just buy a replacement -- they should be pretty inexpensive.

 

[smvim]

So this alternative might suffice. Instead of continuing to fiddle around with USB connectivity, try using a wireless solution. An app, like AirDroid (free, but with ads), uses WiFi instead of a physical cable.

AirDroid: File & Remote Access - Apps on Google Play

A one-stop solution for everything

play.google.com

It's actually my preference to a USB cable to transfer data with a computer or other mobile device. All it requires is the AirDroid app installed on your phone and then the web browser on the other device is the user interface to AirDroid. Well, it does require your phone to be connected to the same local network so there is that.
But it works with Linux, Mac, and Windows and pretty much every web browser I've encountered over the years (Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, SeaMonkey, Brave, Opera, I.E., Edge, Vivaldi, Safari, etc.) And it has a long history of active developer support, so unlike a lot of Google services that get arbitrarily killed off as an example, it has a solid history. One drawback is the app's developers have also become more commercialized over time. Now the initial startup page really, really pushes a user to sign up with an online AirDroid account, falsely implying that's a requirement. But you can also use AirDroid to connect to another device using just its local IP address, and this does not involve any restrictions or limitations. The app is fully functional using just peer-to-peer, local connections or using AirDroid's online servers as online storage.
Start the AirDroid app on your phone, then tap on the 'AirDroid Web' icon in the resulting page, then take note of 'Option 2' and the highlighted IP address (an example being http:/10.0.0.7:8888 -- the current IP address of your phone with the port number the app is using.) Type that exact same address into the web browser of the other, target device, and a graphical, modified page in your browser that represents your phone. From there you can transfer files back and forth, and do things like use the Camera app on your phone by controlling it using that web browser interface on your PC.
Basically prefer AirDroid over a USB cable. Bypasses the need to mess with PTP/MTP/mass storage settings on whichever PC I'm trying to link up with. Nor the need to install anything (Windows drivers, proprietary apps) depending on which platform or OS version.