Ability to Access Your Android Phone in File Explorer for Windows Insiders | Hacker News Reader

Ability to Access Your Android Phone in File Explorer for Windows Insiders

blogs.windows.com

Their image shows the actual /sdcard/ directory open, but doesn't android (google) want people to not give apps access to that folder directly? (giving permission for that folder is not allowed in the new api I think, for "security" and "privacy" purposes, definitely not just to dumb their phone down...).

Have enjoyed this possibility with KDEconnect for a while. Surprising how cutting edge open source can be.

You can even access files on Android in Emacs over USB.

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/tramp/An...

Isn't this already supported using PTP since basically forever?

I've been copying files to/from my phone for years. In recent Android versions you need to explicitly set the "USB mode" for security reasons, but if you do it works.

Sure it's wired but how is that the problem?

Second paragraph:

With this new experience, you will be able to wirelessly browse through all your folders and files

Maybe read the article first?

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that"

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I read it, but I don't get why it's needed, because everyone has USB cables to charge the device anyway, that can be used to attach it to a computer.

Because if I'm sitting at my computer working and realize that I want a file from my phone it is much easier to just open Windows Explorer than 1. Find my phone 2. Maybe need to find a cable 3. Plug in phone and cable.

Your original question:

> Isn't this already supported using PTP since basically forever?

I can't see how you fail to see why this (i.e. reading files wirelessly) is actually not "already supported" if you read the article.

I am so excited to see this. I normally use Samsung Dex to access my phone, which is a decent way to type and file manage on a Windows PC. But it's crashy.

My phone is my primary camera, and getting files on and off still sucks unless you want to use spyware like Dropbox - which I don't. First class filesystem access would be fantastic.

Have you considered Syncthing? It's like p2p Dropbox. Open source and works great. Every photo I take with my phone magically appears on my laptop.

Yes. I haven't been able to get it to work reliably on any of my systems. Problem might be me.

Neat, just an easier to use SMB share I guess.

But I still can't drag a file to the task bar and drop it on a program to open it, or hover over an icon to shift focus to the icon's app and drop it onto that app (e.g., to copy it). For shame. Microsoft, for shame.

> You can open them, copy them to your PC, copy PC files to your phone, rename files, move them, and delete them

Don't even use windows, but no thanks.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33047150

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/warnin...

Sounds like a case of people not having working backups in place. I don't care what OS you use, hardware fails, bugs happen, files get corrupted or accidentally deleted. Have backups.

Lack of responsibility from OS manufacturers isn't exactly a scenario you cover when doing backups. You need to trust the OS first.

Why not? Normal backups for hardware failure and stuff would cover that.

because if you don't trust your OS how can you trust its output? Or that it won't delete something important that will cascade into your backups without you knowing, poisoning the backups?

There is always the problem of trusting trust https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...

You can't trust any OS fully for that IMO. There have been file corruption bugs on Linux filesystems too. And there's always the possibility of an app you install having a bug and corrupting things as well.

One example is Nextcloud had a bug that reset the date/time on my files to 0/0/0 0:0 which required a full restore from backups.

That's why having backups is important, if you have staggered versioning that goes back at least a year or more, and you notice something is wrong eventually, you can recover from just about anything.

Do you think that any file system is immune from you moving files to weird places? I hate on windows on the time but this is a truly silly take.

It's not about a file system, but an integration. No amount of care can account for automations deleting your data. Maybe backups, but you need to trust your OS before trusting your backups.

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