Syncing challenges, wired and wifi

[psychoadept]

I'm trying to sync a Samsung S10e (Android 11) for the first time. The issues here are mostly on Samsung/Android's end, not MusicBee, but I have more hope of finding a solution or workaround on the MB end.

It took me a while to get the wired sync working right; I thought for a minute my SD card might be going bad but it's doing ok now. The problem was mainly that when the phone locked, MB couldn't write to it anymore, but even once I got it unlocked I seemed to have a lot of errors until I completely restarted MusicBee and the sync. I can't disable the lock without removing my fingerprints, etc, so as a workaround I'm playing music in GMMP with the "Keep Screen On" setting enabled. (But the playback skips while MB is trying to write to the SD card so I have the volume all the way down... whatever.)

Meanwhile, I've set up the wifi sync app, hoping that the new phone won't have whatever issue wsa preventing it from seeing MusicBee on my old phone. Looks good until I go to preview. Then this happens:



Basically, when the app asks me to select a folder, Android won't let me select the root SD folder. If I select the MusicBee folder, MusicBee refuses it because it's not the root SD folder. Any chance that could be updated on the MB end? I would love to be able to select the MusicBee folder as my root sync folder in the first place.

Update: I think part of the issue with the wired sync might have been physical after all, not the SD card but the cable. It was definitely disconnecting even without the phone locking. Finally did get everything transferred with no errors.

[Steven]

Regarding the wifi sync requirement to access the root folder, its been ages since i looked at the app and i cant remember the reason the enforcement of that was necessary. It is not obvious why selecting a sub-folder is not acceptable but there was a reason.
It will be quite hard for me to get back into looking at the wifi app. I do vaguely recall there is some way to set compatibility to an older android version for storage access.

[phred]

I've had similar issues with Android 11, and now Android 12. I can't remember exactly how I got around it, but I -think- what I did was to create the necessary directories (playlists, music, etc.) on the SD card. Then launch MB and grant access to the SD card's root. In MB's device settings, set the paths that you want MB to use. I just got a tablet and will be setting that up for WiFi syncing with MB. The easy part with that is that I just took out the SD card from another device that already had my music and playlists. So this will just be a matter of making sure it connects to the proper directories.

[phred]

As a followup ... I can confirm that the steps I mentioned in my previous reply are correct. Create the directories on the card first. Then connect to MB and grant permission to the root of the card. From there I started a sync and the files were placed properly.

[psychoadept]

The problem is my phone won't let me grant permission for the root directory, that's where it says "can't use this folder".

[phred]

The problem is my phone won't let me grant permission for the root directory, that's where it says "can't use this folder".

Hmmm ... very odd. I've seen that once or twice on the new tablet (Android 11) and somehow convinced it. I'll keep thinking about this. I'm sure it can be solved.

[psychoadept]

Thanks. I googled a little based on Steven's comment and came up with something about "legacy" settings, but I didn't get any further.