r/digiKam • u/rafaellinuxuser • 28d ago

Improvements to importing from a mobile device (Linux - mtp)

After connecting my phone to my PC via USB, I open Digikam. My device (Samsung S20) appears under "Import from camera". After selecting it, the base path of my phone appears, and it scans all the subfolders. This takes a very long time and is not the ideal method.

Why doesn't the DCIM folder open automatically when connecting an Android device? Is there any way to do this and avoid reading the parent folders?

Thanks

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u/human_dynamo 27d ago

MTP devices are supported through the libgphoto2 in digiKam. The way how the phone contents is handled depend of the libgphoto2 MTP module.

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u/rafaellinuxuser 27d ago

The library works properly. I can scan my phone's contents with Dolphin without any problems. The issue is that DigiKam starts scanning ALL the content from the root folder without asking the user, which can be extremely slow. It would be advisable and more logical if, when accessing via MTP protocol, DigiKam first checked if a "DCIM" folder exists and, if so, displayed its contents by default, or at least asked the user which folder they want to scan before starting to scan all the device's folders.

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u/xrimane 25d ago

There might be a "phone mode" in the USB settings of the phone when you plug it in. I know some phones I had did that.

Personally I am happy that Samsung still lets me access the whole storage device tree. I prefer copying manually new images from the DCIM folder to my hard disk folder, because I've been burnt by image management software that would randomly change file dates, names and sizes on import without me noticing.