FTP file transfer between Android and PC

I have a dell pc compute and it has windows 7. I can not Bluetooth or plug in my Samsung galaxy s5 phone, what actions should I take for uploading.

There are various ways you can exchange data between a PC and your mobile phone. Basically you can transfer files through USB connection, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, hotspot, these are the four methods you can use to copy your data over between different devices for now.

If you can’t connect up your phone and computer through Bluetooth or USB, still you have the WiFi or hotspot options. The Wifi connection does not have to be the internet connection although they are usually the same thing for mobile phone users under many circumstance. In fact, a local Wifi connection at home or in the office can also help you transfer data between different devices in the local network wirelessly. Hotspot or personal hotspot is another popular way for us to exchange data between mobile phones, computers. In an earlier guide, we discussed how you can do that with a Samsung Galaxy phone. Check out the details from this guide to setup WiFi Hotspot on Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime. In fact many modern smartphones support personal hotspot. You can refer to this tutorial to enable Wifi hotspot on Xiaomi and Redmi phones, just another example. Once a Wifi hotspot configured on the mobile phone, you can connect your PC or Mac to this hotspot, then transfer files and documents between phone and computer through hotspot. On the other hand, you can also choose to create hotspot on computer side, then connect your phone to the hotspot for the wireless transfer between mobile phone and PC or Mac. See this step-by-step tutorial to create Ad hoc wifi hotspot in Windows 10.

Transfer files between Android and PC via FTP

Are you ready to get started now? We will install a free app on the mobile phone and a free FTP client on the desktop or laptop. Thus connect up your mobile phone and computer to the internet and continue with below steps. Some Android phones provide native support to the FTP server, notably the Xiaomi and Redmi phones. On the Mi phones, you do not need any third party apps as you can directly setup FTP server on Xiaomi phone.

Step 1. Download FTP clients

In this demo, we will use the world’s most popular free file manager for Android, the ES file manager on the mobile phone. We have showed you how to transfer documents between Android and computer over Wifi in the help of this file manager before. You can refer to the previous linked guide to download the free file manager for Android devices. In fact, this free app only is able to help you copy files between cell phone and computer over Wi-Fi. In this tutorial, we will demonstrate how to batch download and upload files from Android to computer or from computer to mobile phone, thus we will use a FTP client on the computer end. FileZilla is our favorite. It is the world’s most popular open source free FTP client. It is cross platform for Windows, Mac, Linux and so on. You can download it from this link. Of course, if you already have existing FTP clients or software installed on your computer, it could any eligible FTP tool, or have the ES file manager installed on mobile phone, you can skip these two steps.

Step 2. Connect mobile phone and computer through FTP

We firstly have to set up or enable the FTP server on mobile phone through the file manager app we have downloaded above. Now run the ES file manager on Android phone, go to Tools section, tap Remote Manager.

Now the Remote Manager screen opens as below.

It will display the network status with your connected Wi-Fi network name. Connect your phone to Wi-Fi if not yet. Then press on the ‘Turn on‘ button to setup FTP server on Android mobile phone.

You will then get the Android phone FTP server address with a server port. In this case, the mobile phone FTP address is 192.168.1.103, FTP port is 3721, see above screenshot. Note that this is a local IP address of your device, and it can change every time you connect your mobile phone to the wireless network or router. For example, the next time your cell phone local IP may change to 192.169.1.101, 192.169.1.102, 192.169.1.x.

Secondly we need to run the FTP software on computer to access the FTP server address above. Run FileZilla or any other FTP tool you have.

To connect to Android phone using FileZilla FTP client you can follow these steps:

1. Type in Android phone FTP address in the Host field;
2. Type in Android phone FTP port number in the Port field;
3. Click the Quickconnect button to establish the FTP connection between mobile phone and PC.

Download or upload files between phone and computer via FTP

In the middle section of the FTP client, you can see the Local site and Remote site, which represents the local computer and Android phone separately. Open the folder on your phone or PC which you have the files want to transfer. then open the target folder on the phone or PC which you like to save the files to. All files beneath the folders will be listed at the lower section. Click to select the files you want to transfer, then right click on them to reveal the options to download files from phone to computer or upload files from computer to mobile phone.

For example, if you want to upload files and documents from PC or Mac to mobile phone, you need to firstly open the source files folder on our computer from the Local site box, then open the target folder on mobile phone from the Remote site box, select files in the box below the Local site, right click on them and choose Upload from the context menu, all your selected files will be copied from computer to cell phone through FTP.

Alternatives to FTP transfer between phone and PC

Bluetooth is also handy when you want to occasionally move files from phone to computer or the other way around. Check out this step-by-step tutorial to transfer photos, videos between Xiaomi mobile and PC via Bluetooth. This method allows you transfer files and documents between mobile phone and computer via Bluetooth for free, no third party apps or software required on either phone or computer.

Most Android phones allow users to share internet and/or files via personal hotspot. You can refer to this guide to transfer files via hotspot on Android phones. Hotspot data transfer can be upto 200 times faster than Bluetooth transfer. It can be used for bulk files transfer or heavy media files sharing between different devices.

Should you still have problems sending or receiving data to or from PC or phone through USB, Wifi, Bluetooth or HotSpot, do not hesitate to leave us a message in the comment below.