mtp-mount

Mount MTP devices as local filesystems via FUSE.

Plug in your Android phone or camera, run mtp-mount /mnt/phone, and use ls, cp, cat, rm, etc. on your device's storage. Built on mtp-rs (pure Rust, no libmtp) and fuser.

Install

cargo install mtp-mount

Usage

Mount the first available MTP device:

mtp-mount /mnt/phone

Pick a specific device by serial number:

mtp-mount -d SERIAL /mnt/phone

Mount read-only:

mtp-mount -r /mnt/phone

Unmount:

umount /mnt/phone           # Linux
diskutil unmount /mnt/phone  # macOS

Run mtp-mount --help for the full list of options.

Supported operations

Read: cat, cp, head, less, random-access seeks (media scrubbing, tail -c, partial dd)
Write: create files, overwrite existing files
Directories: ls, mkdir, rmdir
Delete: rm
Rename/move: mv

Not supported

MTP is an object-based protocol, not a block device. Some POSIX features don't map:

Hardlinks and symlinks
File permissions (chmod/chown are no-ops, everything shows as 0644/0755)
Extended attributes
Sparse files or random-access writes (files are uploaded whole on close)

How it works

The FUSE layer translates filesystem calls into MTP operations:

Reads are byte-range on-demand: each FUSE read(offset, size) fetches only the missing bytes via MTP's GetPartialObject64, writes them into a sparse tempfile, and serves the requested slice. Repeated reads of the same region hit the cache. Works with files larger than 4 GB.
Writes buffer to a temp file, then flush to the device on close
Overwrites use a safe upload-then-delete-then-rename sequence when the device supports rename, so data is never lost if the upload fails
Directory listings are cached and refreshed on opendir. A background event monitor listens for device-side changes (files added, removed, or modified on the device itself) and invalidates the cache automatically

Requirements

You need a FUSE implementation:

Linux: sudo apt install libfuse3-dev (Debian/Ubuntu) or fuse3 (Fedora/Arch)
macOS: macFUSE or FUSE-T (may need manual pkg-config wiring)

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/vdavid/mtp-mount.git
cd mtp-mount
cargo build --release

Testing

Unit tests run without FUSE:

cargo test

Integration tests mount a virtual MTP device via FUSE (Linux only, needs libfuse3-dev):

cargo test --test integration -- --ignored --test-threads=1

All 63 tests (42 unit + 21 integration) pass on Linux. The integration tests use mtp-rs's virtual device transport, so no physical device is needed.

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0

mtp-mount 0.3.1