USB Connect Samsung Galaxy s5 to Imac

you likely have to download some sort of a sync program on your mac to connect to the android device

What are you trying to do when you connect the GS5?

Although I don't own a Samsung GS5 I do own a HTC. To my knowledge all andriod device will show up as an external drive and or the Micro SD card will show as an external drive. You might have to change a setting on the phone for this. On my HTC I have the option to have it just charge the battery or charge and show as an external drive when I connect it to any computer USB port.

So do a check on the phone for this type of option/setting.

Once that option is enabled at least the M-SD card show show up in Finder.

Mac OS X and Droid devices don't work with one another by default. They use different languages. Check with Samsung to see if they have a program, and if not, you may want to try finding a third party program.

That is not true. The SD card in any Android device is formatted FAT32 which OS X can read just fine.

I have connected my HTC android phone to my Mac many time and never had a problem reading from or writing to the micro SD card installed in it.

To the OP. Make sure the Mac is set to show external drives in a finder window and on the desktop. You do that in the Finmder preferences, General tab and Sidebar tab.

Chuckles84 wrote:

Mac OS X and Droid devices don't work with one another by default. They use different languages. Check with Samsung to see if they have a program, and if not, you may want to try finding a third party program.

http://www.android.com/filetransfer/

That is all you need. Good day.

I see a lot of advice here based on other phones, but my experience with Samsung S-series + iMac via USB connection is that the Mac WILL NOT see the disks as a drive in Finder. There isn't USB Mass Storage support on the Samsung phones. I've talked to Samsung support about it, they will eventually admit it if pressed.

The ONLY way I can get my Mac to see my S5 is to use the KIES app on the Mac. Android File Transfer does not work for me. I've tried installing it several times, and it never finds the S5.

I find this really frustrating. Other Droid phones I've used mounted the drives as you would expect.

For me, the Samsung will not do this on a Mac.

After a quick search for KIES, I see Samsung is no longer supporting this for Mac. Very unfortunate.

I found a link to a copy that works on my iMac, but it's not from the official site:

http://www.softlate.com/kies?keyword=samsung+kies&affid=71603&rid=1122281_0

I found it listed here, where the USB Mass Storage problem is discussed:

http://www.teamandroid.com/2014/03/25/samsung-galaxy-s5-usb-drivers-download/

I'm not sure where some people are getting their info from, but Samsung does, in fact, have a Mac-native version of Kies 3 (which is required for the S5) available. Go to http://www.samsung.com/us/kies and scroll down a little on the page. It is listed under the Windows versions and some graphics. This is what I use on my iMac to transfer files between it and my S5.

Agree with brobbins above - here's another way to get to Kies for Mac and PC:

http://www.samsung.com/in/support/usefulsoftware/KIES/JSP

Connect your GS5 to your Mac via USB3 cable & make sure phone screen is unlocked. Now launch Kies. Once your phone is detected, click to select your phone in the nav bar on the left. In the main window on the right, you'll see lots of information about your phone, including memory in use (both internal & SD card):

If you click the little file folder icon as illustrated above, a new dialog box opens up. Us that like a Finder window & drag/drop files & folders between your Mac and the SD card:

The reason that MTP "works" on the PC and lets you treat the SD card like a USB drive is that, in Windows, MTP support is built-in, and it just "works." Not so on the Mac. So until someone comes up with a utility or patch so that an MTP device can be mounted on the desktop of a Mac, you'll either a) have to use a VM and do your management on the "PC side" of your machine, or b) manually sync using drag/drop and Kies as described above.

Just got a S5 and have spent DAYS messing around with it and when trying to figure out how to get iTunes music onto it I also could not get my Macbook Pro to find it in ANY USB setting! It showed up for like 3 minutes and then drops off altogether . Took one members advice and made a playlist for the "S5" and sat here reading this thread trying to figure it all out.

Then while messing around with device I just turned on Bluetooth and BAM it synced up and started transferring the playlist to the device -however it never gave me the option to select the SD card at all. Therefore, I just transferred 200 songs to the device itself but even 16 GB has a lot of room for all of them! Of course it took awhile but I actually got them all moved over and they play no problem on phone and also thru my truck which has BT too.

Just wanted to let you all know that when the USB issues come up you do in fact have the BT option to fall back on to transfer anything to the S5 off any Mac. ****; i even downloaded Kies, the Android Switch, another one from Samsung site and since the **** phone wouldn't show up on Macbook nothing could be done that way! Thank goodness for Bluetooth my fellow Mac users!

On the S5 - its a for sure good device! Has more features than my S3 ever did and runs super smooth and fast too! Everything except this USB issue AND the fact that it only has Chrome is good to go. I despise Chrome so downloaded Dolphin and use that as default browser now. Oh- and then i have the infamous duplicate contacts issue too which is driving me nuts trying to figure that one out!

At least the iTunes music got moved over which a few years ago was virtually impossible with ANY Android remember??

Semper Fi !

Fitz

The Android File Transfer app looks a little creepy. How can I be sure it's legit and not going to contaminate my Mac?

PS: The Verizon tech people tell me that Samsung states the new Galaxy S6 is not iMac compatible. :-(

PS: The Verizon tech people tell me that Samsung states the new Galaxy S6 is not iMac compatible. :-(

The Android File Transfer looks a little creepy. How can I be sure that it's

legit and not going to contaminate my Mac?

PS: Verizon just told me that Samsung states on their new Galaxy 6's, that they are NOT compatible with iMac. :-(

Sounds like they are intentionally building them that way. Bummer.