MTP

Raised as a usability problem by 5 people on Hacker News over 10 years (2016–2025), in 5 threads.

People raised many different problems with MTP, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 5 complaints

Windows stalls when listing folders with many photos and videos on the phone2025-09-09
File transfer over MTP is slow and flaky2025-05-14
MTP is terrible on every OS for interacting with devices2018-07-12
File transfer over MTP is so frustrating that users switch to command-line adb instead2017-09-28
MTP connection to phone on Linux was painful and nearly unusable for years2016-05-05