How to copy Music under linux ?

Which Linux? I have Ubuntu and Mate desktop and just plug it in, I can copy files to and from the device, filemanager just 'knows' to use MTP. Never tried music files though, admittedly. Are the files copied correctly? Can you view them on the watch's storage?

I use Archlinux but it's irrelevant here as I know well howto mount/umount my watch from the CLI and also copy files.

My guess is that Garmin Express put some sort of m3u files or similar to the watch after a copy : it's something garmin could tell us.

Maybe someone with a working music on his 955 can give me the structure of his Music folder ?

Thanks,

Gregoire.Favre said:

Maybe someone with a working music on his 955 can give me the structure of his Music folder ?

Well, I mainly use Linux (openSUSE Tumbleweed), but have a Windows computer with Garmin Express, too.
I copied one music file (original format of my collection for mobile devices is AAC in .m4a container) to the FR955, using Garmin Express.

This is how it looked like in Linux (Dolphin File Explorer):

Interesting part is, that while it is still .m4a, it is shown as type "MPEG4 Video" (!).

The original files look like this:

Here, it is .m4a and shown as type "MPEG4 Audio" (which is right, of course)
Strange... maybe some converting happening on Garmin (Express) side?

Beside that, the folder structure looks normal.

Hope that helps.

Oh thanks you very much : would you mind looking into mtp:Forunner 955:Internal Storage:Music for a file with a list of installed Music ?

No, there is nothing (I activated "show hidden files" in Dolphin).
Just the folders and the music file:

Thank you very much. Then I have to reinstall qemu and a windows.

Gregoire.Favre said:

Maybe someone with a working music on his 955 can give me the structure of his Music folder ?

I use both PC and Mac to copy MP3s (and other audio files) to my FR955 (using File Explorer or OpenMTP). (The vast majority of my music is on Spotify, but I also download some rare tracks / remixes from Youtube, and convert them to Garmin-supported formats when necessary). (btw spotify is soooo bad on garmin devices)

While I do create M3Us by hand (so I have handy playlists), I’ve also had success simply copying music files that aren’t referenced by any M3U.

The m3us are pretty basic. e.g.

folder1\some artist - some song.mp3
folder2\another artist - another song.m4a

No header, no extended info, no leading backslash in paths (all paths are relative to the m3u files themselves, which I’ve placed at the top level of the Music/ folder), no escaping of any characters (including spaces). I think using slashes instead of backslashes would also work (but I don't think it matters).

So my fr955 folder structure looks like this:

/ [forerunner 955 > internal storage]
|
|
---- Music/
       |
       |----- folder1/
       |          |----- some artist - some song.mp3
       |
       |----- folder2/
       |          |----- another artist - another song.m4a
       |
       |----- playlist1.m3u
       |
       |----- playlist2.m3u
       |
       …

(In reality, I set things up so each folder usually corresponds to a single playlist, just to keep things simple. But I doubt the actual folder structure matters.)

I have never used Garmin Express to manage my music files.

If you are looking for something much more user-friendly, you could host your music on a local plex server and use the free CIQ app submusic.

Also, I noticed that openmtp (a fairly popular mtp app for Mac) had to be updated in 2022 to support FR945 (and possibly other Garmin devices).

https://github.com/ganeshrvel/openmtp/issues/153

If you are using simple-mtpfs (last updated in 2020) is it possible that it doesn't have proper support for Garmin devices? Are you building against the latest version of libmtp?

I assume you are double-checking that the device is mounting properly and the files were actually copied to your device, so forgive me if this is a stupid question.

I did notice that libmtp has support for "Forerunner 955 Solar" which should be equivalent to the non-solar version as well:

[https://github.com/libmtp/libmtp/commit/5e85a889f36f6940cb31b43d41e4bc4179060409]

Oh, you're completely right : the files I can copy to my 955 are in fact empty (from linux). I installed a WM and copied them from Garmin Express and I will try again from linux.

Thank you very much.