Hello everybody!
In today’s video, I’m going to show you how to transfer files from an Android smartphone
to a computer, or from a computer to a smartphone.
We’ll find out how to transfer your photos, videos and other files from a smartphone to
a desktop PC by USB cable, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and over the Internet, or how you can do it
with a Micro SD card or USB drive.
Quite often people need to transfer files from a smartphone to a computer and vice versa.
For example, as you take pictures or film videos with a smartphone, the number of files
is increasing and they are beginning to take up more and more space.
It would be much more convenient to store all those files on a computer.
Or let’s take a completely different situation: you have an interesting movie on your computer,
and you’d like to watch it while traveling.
In this case, you need to transfer this file to your smartphone or tablet PC.
So if you sometimes find yourselves in a situation like that, watch this video how do solve the
problem without hassle.
With almost any modern operating system, you can easily connect an Android device as a
storage device so that you can transfer files from your smartphone to the computer.
Besides, there are many other ways of doing it - with a USB cable, via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi,
Internet, with a memory card or a USB drive.
Now let’s have a closer look at each of the methods.
Transferring files with a USB cable For the first method you need a USB cable
to transfer your files from a smartphone to the computer.
Such cable comes supplied with your smartphone (it’s the same cable you use every time
you charge your gadget).
Connect the smartphone and the computer with this cable.
Depending on the settings, you will see a notification on your smartphone: in my case,
it says the gadget is charging from the USB port.
To open advanced settings, tap on the notification.
You can choose between the following options: Charging, File Transfer, PTP (transfer of
pictures) Select File Transfer.
After that, the smartphone should appear in the File Explorer.
If it doesn’t happen, try another mode.
If the smartphone never appears in the File Explorer, Open the Device Manager, right-click
on the unrecognized device and choose Update Driver Software.
Browse my computer for driver software / Let me pick from a list of available drivers on
my computer.
Look for portable devices, check the box for standard MTP device and MTP USB device.
Agree and continue.
Now the smartphone should appear in the File Explorer.
Open This PC to find your gadget, its model name specified.
If you have a memory card inside your gadget, you will see two storage devices - the phone
memory and the SD card.
Open the one where the necessary files are stored, go to the corresponding folder and
just copy the files to the computer.
If you don’t know where the files are, Let’s try to find out.
Photos or videos are usually stored to such folders as DCIM/Camera or Download (you can
find folders with such names both on your smartphone and on the SD card).
If you know the file name, or a part of it, you can try finding them by pressing F3 button
and entering the name.
If you get the name right, you are likely to see the file you are looking for.
That’s all: now you can just copy any information from the smartphone to your computer, or the
other way round.
Transfer files with Bluetooth The next method of file transfer involves
Bluetooth.
To make it possible, here’s what you should do:
First of all, turn on Bluetooth on your computer.
To do it, click on the notifications area in the right lower corner of the screen.
In the window that opens, click on the tab “Bluetooth” To enable it.
If there is no Bluetooth icon, click Expand.
If there is no icon yet, try opening: START / SETTINGS / DEVICES / Bluetooth & other devices.
Check the settings to make sure Bluetooth is enabled, and then click “Add Bluetooth
or other device.”
Then specify the type of device.
Right-click on the Bluetooth icon on the taskbar.
In the window that opens click on “Receive a file.”
You can also choose to send the file to a smartphone or another device.
Bluetooth File Transfer window will open.
Now turn to your smartphone.
Open Gallery or the folder with files you need to transfer.
To send a file, open it and tap the corresponding button, choose Bluetooth from the list.
If it’s turned off, you will see a notification saying that it has to be enabled.
Here, tap once to enable it.
The list of Bluetooth devices will appear.
You should select your computer from the list by tapping on its name.
File transfer begins.
By default, the files are saved to the Documents folder; if you want them saved to a different
location, click Browse and specify the path.
When it’s over, click Finish.
That’s all - the file has been transferred to the computer.
As you can see, it’s pretty easy.
Transfer files by Wi-Fi Many people have wireless routers at home
so that all devices inside their homes have an Internet connection.
If you have a Wi-Fi router too, with your smartphone and computer connected to one network,
you can transfer data by Wi-Fi.
To make it possible, the most convenient way would be to install a special app to your
smartphone to create an FTP server.
With this app, you will be able to use the phone storage as a typical FTP storage device.
The simplest and most reliable app to use is Wi-Fi FTP server (FTP Server).
To start work, just tap a single button.
It’s free and you can download it from Google Play.
At first, check your Wi-Fi connection to make sure the computer and the smartphone belong
to the same network.
Launch the app and tap on Start.
After that you will get the URL address which should be typed into the browser or file explorer
on your computer.
There are also login and password for you, but usually these are not required.
In my case, the address looks like this ftp://192.168.0.100:2221/.
Type it into the File Explorer (please make sure that you type everything exactly, without
omitting a single dot).
If the address is correct, you will see all folders inside your phone’s memory - but
on the display of your computer.
Now you can copy the required files to the computer or delete them if necessary.
Previously, I have already shown you where to search for the files.
Transfer files over the Internet Another method is transferring files over
the Internet.
For users with Android smartphones, choosing Google services will be the best option.
It could be Google Drive good for dealing with any files, or Google Photos designed
to work with photos and pictures.
To use this service, you need a Google account.
Use your account data to sign in.
Of course, you need to have one of these apps installed on your smartphone, but usually
one of them is already there for you by default.
If you work from a computer, use your browser to follow the link:
drive.google.com/drive/my-drive
Now let’s see how to transfer files from your smartphone to the computer, on condition
that they take up no more than 15 Gb (this is the space limitation for Google Drive).
If you need to transfer a photo or video, open the Gallery, check the required file
and tap to send it: choose Google Drive from the options.
The files will be uploaded to the cloud storage.
To have them saved to your PC, open any browser and go to Google Drive.
Enter the login and the password.
You will see the files you have downloaded from the smartphone.
Select them and click to download.
That’s all - now all the files have been downloaded to your PC.
Transfer files with an SD card If your gadget supports Micro SD cards, you
can use them to transfer files to a computer.
To do it, you will need a card reader and a corresponding adapter.
Connect the card to the smartphone and copy the data to the card.
After that, use a Micro SD adapter to connect the car to the card reader of your laptop
or desktop computer and copy the files.
This process is also possible in the reversed order.
Unfortunately, some modern laptops and PCs still don’t have an integrated card reader.
If that’s the case, you can buy a small versatile adapter and use it for connecting
the SD card to your computer.
Transfer files with a USB drive With most present-day phones and tablets,
connecting a USB drive is not a problem.
For this purpose, engineers invented a special adapter from MicroUSB to a conventional USB
port, known as USB OTG adapter.
There are different versions of this connector, ranging from short stub-like pieces to full-format
cables.
Connecting and using it is very easy.
Connect a USB drive to such adapter.
Open any file explorer application on your smartphone.
You will see an external USB storage - that is the USB drive connected to the adapter.
Now follow the same sequence: find the necessary files on the smartphone and copy them to the
USB drive.
Then connect the USB drive to the computer and copy the data to the hard disk.
Actually, working with a USB drive using a file explorer in a smartphone is very similar
to doing that in Windows.
Transfer files with email If you need to send a relatively small amount
of photos or files, you can even use email to do it.
Open Gallery on your Android smartphone, select the necessary pictures and tap ‘Share.”
Choose email and tap to send.
If there are not too many photos and your Internet connection is fast enough, you will
have an email with all the pictures attached in a minute or two.
As the next step, you can download them to your computer.
That’s all for now!
I hope you find this video useful.
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Leave comments to ask questions.
Thank you for watching.
Good luck.