Tag Archives: Mac

How to transfer files over 4 GB from Android to a Mac

I had to do some fairly deep digging to get this answer, so maybe I can help someone else.

I’m an Apple guy. But lately I’ve been having to record some video with a phone on a tripod, unattended. I don’t want to risk getting my iPhone stolen, so I’ve been using my Android testing phone instead (a Google Pixel 3a). It actually shoots pretty decent video, but getting that video off the Pixel and onto my Mac has been… a challenge.

After some initial digging the first time around, I discovered Android File Transfer. It’s a Mac app that lets you access the Android file system and transfer files over a USB connection. It’s just hard to remember exactly how to get it to work, at least for someone like me who is not super familiar with Android. The short version is you have to go into the Android device’s USB settings and turn on File Transfer mode.

Today I had a new problem. Once I got connected, I started to transfer two very large video files (16 GB and 9 GB) over to my Mac. All seemed to be going well, until I hit exactly 4.00 GB in the transfer, then it just stalled. No warning, no error. It just stopped transferring. Trying to cancel the transfer also didn’t work.

It’s really stupid that the app doesn’t just tell you this up front — or, like, you know, ever — but after digging into the issue, I learned the app has a 4 GB file size limit. I didn’t investigate why, but having dealt with this kind of nonsense on the Windows FAT file system in the past, I suspect it’s a stupid legacy quirk no one has ever considered important enough to fix.

Anyway, I needed another solution, and I found it. FTP. Specifically, I chose to use the WiFi FTP Server app. I mean really, you could use an FTP client app to transfer files to an FTP server, or install an FTP server on your Mac, but it just seemed easier to me to make the Android phone the FTP server, and let my Mac connect to it with Panic’s trusty (well… it used to be trusty, but that’s another blog post) FTP client, Transmit.

The FTP transfer is over WiFi, as the name implies, so yes, it’s slower than the wired USB connection. But… and here’s the key thing… it works.

P.S. After several minutes of the transfer running, I glanced down and noticed that the WiFi FTP Server app (which, of course, like most Android apps, is free to download) has an ad bar at the bottom. I hate to break it to those advertisers, but they are not getting any kind of R.O.I.

Using your Mac with your iPhone hotspot? Be sure to turn on low data mode!

In the summer, I like to take my MacBook Pro with me and work outdoors. Doing that is entirely dependent upon my T-Mobile hotspot on my iPhone. I had my account maxed out at 16 GB of hotspot data per month, so imagine my surprise today when — one day into a new cycle — I got a notification text that my data had been used up!

I’m still not sure what exactly my Mac was doing, presumably some kind of background iCloud Drive backup, but I managed to use up an entire month’s allotment of bandwidth in extremely short order. I worked with T-Mobile support to get my account bumped up to the absolute maximum 20 GB, but there’s no certain explanation of what it was that used all of that data.

But along the way I discovered the Mac does let you configure “low data mode” specific to each network you connect to. If you find yourself needing to use a hotspot regularly, I would strongly recommend turning on low data mode for that network. To do that with the new Ventura System Settings app, go to WiFi, then under Known Networks click the … icon for your hotspot, and chose Network Settings…

Now here’s where it gets interesting. I turned on the Low data mode toggle about five times and it kept, after a couple of seconds, shutting itself back off. Finally it “stuck.” Now we’ll see over the coming days if it actually makes a difference!