Phone appears blank on windows explorer

Help Fairphone 2
1

Hi there

I find that when connecting my phone to windows it is recognised and given an icon [FP2] in windows explorer, but the content is shown as completely blank, no files, no folders, nothing, just blank.

Is there a fix for this or any known issues that could cause it? I recently installed F-Droid and Firefox and re-installed “Amaze” after the upgrade removed it. Not sure if this was the cause. has anyone else had a similar issue?

Any ideas as to how to solve much appreciated.
Thanks
Andy

2

Sometimes the index of files that android creates goes a bit wrong. It’s worth a shot resetting it:

After the reboot, Android will index your files again: this can take a while and may also use a bit of battery power. This process runs in the background, so there isn’t indication of progress (unfortunately).

Just to clarify: the quoted procedure removes the index, not the files themselves.

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3

Did you activate MTP mode?
If not, the phone is probably in charging mode.

You should be able to see USB connection options by swiping down the top menu.

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4

It shouldn’t get an Explorer icon in charging mode … at least with my Windows 10 Pro (1709 now) it doesn’t.

5

Thanks for the reset idea, I have tried it but no joy, I still just get a blank when looking at the phone - yes it is recognised by the computer and I can click on it as a device to see contents, just nothing is showing.

Not sure exactly what MTP mode is? Just in case it helps, how do I activate it?

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6

When your Fairphone is connected to your computer, swipe down on your phone. Now you probably see
USB for charging. Tap on that notice and in the next popup choose for ‘File transfers’.

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7

Ah! Great, thanks - that did the trick.
I was completely unaware of this feature. I presume this is a new feature since the update as I never had to do this in the past?

Thanks again
Andy

8

Here’s some more stuff that changed …

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9

Ah, ok. It does show an icon but no contents in that case on my Ubuntu 16.04 machine, but of course Windows might behave differently.

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