So, awhile back I got tired enough of the default ringtones that I wanted to assign some to certain contacts. I was able to add them to the list of the ringtones. I did this by creating a folder called "Ringtones"...it works. only for some reason when I plug my phone into the computer and use it as "mass storage" it takes all the settings away and no ringtones are assigned anymore. Has anyone else noticed this?
There's got to be a way to assign ringtones and have them stick no matter what you do...
And the method used was taking the ringtones and putting them in the /system/media/audio/ and creating a Ringtone folder in the audio directory...it still wont stick after plugging into computer and enabling "mass storage".
connect as usb mass storage also seems to clear your playlists (the playlist name will show up, but no tracks are in them).
i just connect as windows media sync when i need to transfer files to it. you only get access to one of the device's memories via this method (either interal mass storage or sdcard) but it keeps me from having to resync my playlists all the time.
Thanks Souai, that is a good work-around for now...but I figure there has to be a way to avoid this and not have to tip-toe around.
When you mount as USB storage on your computer, it unmounts it from the phone. If the phone can't see it how can it see the associated ringtone? It's like this on every android phone.
Sent from my Inspire 4G
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Introduction
Over several years of searching XDA and the rest of the internet, I have finally succeeded in arriving at a solution for synchronising my mobile device with my PC that works for me. It fulfils my requirements and I know from reading many threads, my methods will answer many questions for inexperienced users in particular. So I will share.
My PC System
Windows XP MCE SP3
MS Outlook
Windows Media Player 11
Activesync 4.5
AV Art Fixer for WMP and MCE (Freeware - donations welcome)
MobSync 2.0.3 (Shareware - This has a 30 day trial period and registration costs $8.)
My Mobile System
HTC HD2 Leo T8585
Windows Mobile 6.5
HTC Sense 2.5
HTC Audio Manager
HTC AlbumMost of this guide will however apply to variations on these specs. I will arrange my guide into 3 areas.
1. Contacts and Appointments: Using ActiveSync/MS Outlook/HTC Contacts.
2. Music: Using Windows Media Player/HTC Audio Manager.
3. Pictures, Videos and any Folder or File Type: Using MobSync.
Contacts and Appointments: Using ActiveSync/MS Outlook/HTC Contacts
ActiveSync does this well but I recommend avoiding enabling the Media option as this just leads to confusion, conflicts and endless loops. ActiveSync, for all its critics at least manages to sync your contacts and appointments. I would avoid using it for anything else, especially the Media option! Now every time you connect via ActiveSync any changes at either end will be synchronised.
Procedure
1, Download and install the latest version of ActiveSync to your PC.
2. Ensure MS Outlook has your contacts and appointments as you would wish.
3. Give your Device a name you like by going to WinMo Settings/System/About on your device and changing your Device ID. Use underscores instead of spaces. This just means you can see your devices name in ActiveSync and it's very reassuring. If you have more than one device then the benefits are enormous!
4. Connect your device to your PC via USB cable. Bluetooth or Infrared connection is perfectly OK but I figure it cuts out several middle-men-glitches if you just connect the two with wires!
5. Your device should ask you how to connect, choose ActiveSync and Enable faster data synchronisation.
6. A wizard will commence and on the second screen you will have to choose what to sync. I suggest just selecting the tick boxes for Contacts and Calendar. However, if you wish, no harm will be done by selecting the Notes, Tasks or Files options as well. The Files option is not very useful and I will give a much better solution to file syncing later in section 3.
7. Finish the wizard and the sync will begin.
Music: Using Windows Media Player/HTC Audio Manager
Many of us have had trouble understanding HTC's Audio Manager's relationship with Windows Media Player and I think I've just sussed it! We have all bulked at absent album art and music files listed in Audio Manager but not present on the device. The two golden rules are ensure you have album art in Media Player and never delete music directly from your device. To be absolutely sure you can make sure album art is embedded in your Media Player music files before syncing, but I no longer think this is essential. You will not have to fiddle with "Folder.jpg" files either. HTC Audio Manager will play other music formats but will only have correct ID3 tag info, and so album art, for the MP3 format. So only use MP3 tunes. The upshot is that HTC Audio Manager is quite capable of synchronising with your WMP library using mp3 files without having to separately create Folder.jpg files.
Main points
1. Change your HTC Audio Manager content ONLY via WMP.
2. Restart your mobile device after every sync with WMP and preferably, after this, visit the HTC Music tab.
3. Remember that the Now playing tab in HTC Audio Manager and hence the Music tab display in Sense will be out of date until a new selection is made to the Now playing list.
Initial sync
1. Organise your music in Windows Media Player. This can take some doing and some time and some cursing, but is very helpful. Tidiness is next to obsession, but worth it in the end. So try to get as much ID3 tag info as possible, but especially album art. Close WMP before doing anything else. (Optional) Use AV Album Art Fixer to complete any missing media information and album art. I have found this very useful in completing ID3 tag info for media files. It's not very intuitive but worth a fiddle. It will also embed album art if you wish for security's sake or simply piece of mind, if obsessional! Close AV Album Art Fixer before doing anything else. It will ask you to open WMP and click Tools/Apply Media Information Changes to complete its work. If you have duplicates or missing data or missing files this will potentially cause errors with your sync.
2. Create a playlist in WMP. Name it as you wish. The idea is that you will sync this playlist only with your device. However, once mastered, you can develop this idea further. The world will be your oyster! I name my playlist "HD2" so I don't get confused.
3. Add all music that you want on your device to this playlist in WMP. You'll have to work out how to do this for yourself.
4. Connect with USB cable. Use ActiveSync connection.
5. Set up sync partnership. A one screen "wizard" will start where you can name your storage card and that's all! Choose a memorable name, it's going to be helpful. Click on Finish and as soon as possible Click Stop Sync in the bottom right corner of the screen. If this Stop Sync button is not visible click on the Sync tab at the top of WMP and it will be there. If you don't stop sync WMP will fill up your phone with everything its got room for!
6. Change sync relationship to only sync your intended playlist. In the left hand pane of WMP your device should be listed. Right click it and select "Set up sync...". A dialogue box will appear which is very important.1. In the right hand pane there are lots of possible playlists to sync. Highlight them and remove them all to the left hand pane.
2. In the left hand pane select your special previously prepared playlist (See step 4 above) and add it to the right hand pane.
3. Select shuffle if you want but it's not necessary, you can do it on your device later.7. Click finish and hey presto! Wait for sync to complete.
8. Restart your mobile device. After syncing it is necessary to reset/restart your device in order for HTC Sense/Audio Manager to register your changes. Then when you next visit the HTC Sense music tab the revolving circle in the top left will indicate that HTC Audio Manager is updating its recordsChanges to sync
1. To remove songs from your device. Remove them from the WMP playlist and do a manual sync.
2. To add songs to your device. Add them to your WMP playlist and do a manual sync.
3. Change what's "Now playing". Also note that the "Now playing" HTC Audio Manager tab will be confused after you change the music on your device until you select another tune, album, artist, genre or playlist to play. The Sense music tab dictates what is in the HTC Audio Manager "Now playing" tab.
4. Delete sample music. You may with impunity delete the sample music from your devices file memory without a problem. You won't find it in WMP as it is only your storage card/internal memory that is synced.
5. Deleting from WMP. If you want to delete a song from your PC and it is synced to your Mobile device, it is wisest to remove it from the WMP playlist before deleting it.
6. Dummy playlist. A trick I use if it all goes wrong: Create a playlist in WMP containing one tune or even one picture. Then in the "Set up sync..." WMP dialogue box move the Music playlist out of your sync list and the new single item playlist into the sync list, and sync. This will remove all your tunes and add the single item. Restart your device and then reverse the procedure to get your music back to your device. WMP will not let you have a sync setup without a playlist in the sync list.
Pictures, Videos and any other Folder or File Type: Using MobSync
Procedure
1. Download and install MobSync.
2. Create folders on your PC where you wish to sync files. I chose to make a folder in "My Documents" called "PDA Pictures" for my phones pictures and a similar folder called "PDA Videos" for my phones Video files. You make whichever folders you wish with names you like, appropriate to the files you want to sync.
3. Locate where on your device the files you wish to sync reside. I find it best to let the phone do its thing here. By that, I mean, set your camera to use your storage card/internal storage for saving images/videos and they will then appear in the Storage Card/DCIM/100MEDIA folder
2. Connect your device using ActiveSync method.
3. Open MobSync.
4. Now add a Sync "Job" by clicking Job menu and then Add. Then you will have to decide what folder and files you want to sync.
5. In the dialogue box that ensues, name the "Job". I chose to have one job for pictures and one for videos so as the two types of files would be synced to my newly created PC folders separately. My first Job name was "Pictures" and my second "Videos".
6. Using the ... button below next, navigate to your chosen PC Folder ("PDA Pictures" in my case for my first Job), to direct your phones pictures to the correct folder on your PC.
7. Using the ... button below next, navigate to your chosen WM(Device) Folder, to direct MobSync where to find your phones pictures, in this example. This will be Storage Card or Internal Storage/DCIM/100MEDIA, as we decided earlier.
8. Now use the "Target File" box to decide what files within these folders you wish to sink. In this example, I chose to delete the "*" line and to edit the "*.*" line to "*.jpg". So you can see already how you can use this method to sync any file type from any folder as vaguely or precisely as you wish.
9. Click OK to complete the Job creation.
10. Repeat as you see fit. I then created a similar Job for videos which differed only in its name, PC Folder and the Target file type being "*.mp4".
11. Your Jobs will appear in the main window now and you can choose to sync when you're ready and set it to sync on connection and how often if you edit the Job.
So there it is! The music procedure is a little exacting, but in the end you get the hang of it. Feel free to suggest any changes in content or readability. Hope it helps.
Anyone know how to set a gmail specific tone and a diff tone for another email such as hotmail??
Also how to set tones for specific contacts? ?
Sent from my MB855 using XDA Premium App
For the e-mail issue, I suppose it depends on the app you are using...I use Enhanced E-mail and in the account settings for each individual account you can specify a unique notification tone.
As far as contacts go, go to the Contacts tab of the dialer app, click on the contact you wish to assign ringtone to, select Menu and Options then select your ringtone...repeat as necessary.
If you don't want to use the supplied ringtones, I think if you create a folder on your sdcard (or maybe internal storage) called 'media' then sub-folder 'audio' then sub-folders there for 'ringtones', 'notifications', and 'alarms' then place your personal mp3/ogg files in the appropriate folder that should work (may have to reboot for system to recognize the tones). Alternately, you can just put the tones in the appropriate folder in the 'system/media/audio' folders (will need to mount the system as read/write in order to copy files over - I use ES File Explorer...just go into settings to enable rooted options then mount system).
None of the Google Applications support external storage, Gmail 4.1.2 won't send documents attached from an external sd card, Play Movies & TV won't allow you to specify a external card as a storage location, pinned Google Drive documents can't be stored on an external card, Play Music sucks up internal memory. Try sending an attachment using Gmail from a Motorola Xoom, a "Google Experience Device" - it looks like it's attached during composition but won't send. When contacting support I'm told this is expected behavior - see below.
Anyone else running into this?
How do we get Google to support this? Most other email applications support it, but as a Google Apps Enterprise user I want and expect the native Android email application to work.
I use external storage on a Galaxy Note 10.1, Galaxy S3, Razr Maxx and Transformer Prime
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Hi John,
Thanks for your message.
I have been able to determine the reason that you're not able to attach files from SD, as follows:
- The default storage path is pointing to the internal storage, which is supported, rather than an external storage path such as SD.
- The Gmail app itself, as it uses APIs behind the scenes, is not able to load attachments from the external path, only from the default (internal) path.
- I've been able to find an error that results when trying to perform this task, as follows (and as an example):
ERROR/Gmail(4494): file:// attachment paths must point to file:///mnt/sdcard. Ignoring attachment file:///Removable/sdcard/sample_file.pdf
In terms of /mnt/sdcard you see above, this is pointing to the internal/onboard storage. For '/sdcard/', this is actually a symbolic link which points back to /mnt/sdcard (the internal storage).
The removable (SD) card points to /Removable/sdcard, which Gmail cannot access via API, as this returns the internal storage location. The API also cannot access other directories such as /mnt/external1 or another location.
Based on all of the above, our technical teams have concluded that this is the current/expected behaviour for files coming from SD, as there is no way to access them via Gmail, and they can only be attached when coming from onboard/internal memory. In short, it is a limitation of the API John. From a technical point of view, it will be possible to attach files that are from SD, but are nested (sub-directory) inside /mnt/sdcard, however, I understand this may not be feasible or convenient.
I understand that this is an important distinction and requirement for you John, however, the above information is what I can provide you with. I will still suggest using the recommendations earlier of IMAP in Email application, or, files coming from internal/onboard storage in Gmail app over API (in the background).
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I just tried on my s3 and managed to attach from the external and send here.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using Xparent Cyan Tapatalk 2
Up until now, I've handled syncing between my android phone and windows laptop over wifi with a combination of two apps:
1) SyncMe - one-button mirroring of predefined "sync pairs". This lets me put ebooks, documents, encrypted password files, etc. into a folder on my laptop, then one-tap sync them over wifi to my phone, without dealing with cables or exposing my data to the internet.
2) Sweet Home - automatically starts up when it detects my home wifi network, and pushes any new photos to the photo "inbox" on my laptop. It also remembers which files have been pushed, so that when I organize/move the laptop copies, I don't get the same pics pushed across the next time. Basically, a smart no-click "sync once" for new files only.
Unfortunately, Windows 10 disables the SMB1 protocol, which breaks both of these apps. I don't want to turn it back on, since it has vulnerabilities (EternalBlue) that apparently can't be patched. So now I'm looking for one or more SMB2-capable sync apps. Requirements are the following:
o SMB2 or 3 capability
o one or zero click operation - I know that I can do things manually with a file manager, but that's too slow. I'd like to set up the sync folders once, then forget about it.
o wifi! I know I can use dropbox or whatever, but I don't want to use the cloud, nor do I want to use cables. (I guess bluetooth could be an alternative, but not ideal.)
Maybe I'm asking for something that doesn't exist yet. But even that would be useful information.
I'm also a User of 1) and since the last update of FreeNAS (11.1-U5 to 11.1-U6) they disabled SMB1 by default which basically affects me now too. I reached out to the dev of SyncMe Wireless. Did you try too?
I'm trying to move my existing Viber install from an old device to a new one. Both devices are rooted. I was able to transfer the app, message history, etc just fine via Swift Backup - but the one issue I'm running into is that all of the images are "broken."
The previous (source) device was Android 9, when Viber still stored all its media in /storage/emulated/0/viber. Now on Android 11 (I skipped Android 10), Viber uses scoped storage. However, even if I copy the original "viber" folder to the new device, it seems the new device no longer looks there for the images, thus they're broken in the context of the message thread.
Here's a blurb about their migration: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/07/bringing-modern-storage-to-vibers-users.html. It sounds like on Android 10 they were still using the "viber" folder as "read-only", but it's unclear if it actually would've migrated the images into its scoped storage. When I moved WhatsApp to Android 11, it had an explicit option to migrate the data from its original storage/WhatsApp directory. Viber seems to have no such option. So the obvious solution should be to just find where Viber now stores its media, and manually move my images there from the old "viber" folder.
However, the oddest thing, I cannot for the life of me find where they should be.
The most obvious candidates are /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.viber.voip or /storage/emulated/0/Android/media/com.viber.voip - however, when I receive images in the new app, I cannot find any evidence of them in either place. I also checked /data/data/com.viber.voip, and likewise, I don't see the received images there. The article above says "Private media files are stored in the app-specific directory on external storage", which I think means it should be storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.viber.voip/files, but the only thing in there are "User Photos" - which are basically my contacts avatars. It seems like they *have* to be in one of those 3 spots though, because if I backup with SwiftBackup, uninstall Viber, go on airplane mode, restore with SwiftBackup, then check Viber, the images are accessible - meaning it must be reading them from the local device, and not remotely.
So all that is to say - where on earth is Viber now storing its images, and can I manually restore my old /storage/emulated/0/viber images to that location all my media in my message history isn't broken?