Cyanogenmod CM11 (Kitkat) and USB Mass Storage mode

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So after some messing around I discovered that with Cyanogenmod CM11 (KitKat) release that USB Mass Storage mode wasn’t working, so after some messing around here is what I’ve found.

If you’re like me, you enabled developer mode:

  1. Go to the settings menu, and scroll down to “About phone.” Tap it.
  2. Scroll down to the bottom again, where you see “Build number.” (Your build number may vary from ours here.)
  3. Tap it seven (7) times. After the third tap, you’ll see a playful dialog that says you’re four taps away from being a developer. Continue tapping 4 more times and developer mode will appear in your main settings menu.

And probably turned on Android debugging for other applications which might want it (Titanium backup in my case).

Even though the USB Mass Storage mode option is present in the USB connection type menu, when clicked nothing seems to happen.. So after some messing around I discovered that, apparently, UMS (USB Mass Storage mode) is only available to users who disable Android debugging (who knew?). This is a *new* feature apparently as I’ve never seen this problem in earlier Android releases.

After disabling Android debugging, the dialog menu popped right up asking me if I wanted to “Turn on USB Storage”. This worked great, allowed me access to my files and mount the SD cards directly….

That all said, as soon as I turned off USB Mass Storage mode my phone crashed and reset it self, so be careful 🙂

7 thoughts on “Cyanogenmod CM11 (Kitkat) and USB Mass Storage mode

  1. I have the same problem with CM 11-20141008-SNAPSHOT-M11-hammerhead, but even when I switch off the debug mode, it is not possible to get the USB storage mount popup.

    • [ QUOTE: > Go into storage and hit the 3 dots and enable MTP or PTP.]

      no, No, NO! One of the main reasons to install CyanogenMod in the first place is get rid of MTP/PTP and restore USB Mass Storage Mode! If Mass Storage Mode has been deleted from later builds of CyanogenMod, that’s horrible news! I am aware of all of the reasoning behind Google’s switch from Mass Storage Mode to MTP, but it still sucks. MTP has no support for TeraCopy, WinMerge, or any of the other standard Windows file syncing tools, forcing you to dismount the external micro-SD card and put in in a card reader on your PC to do a file transfer, then re-mount it in the Tablet. MTP is a giant step backward in every way, and makes it much harder for me to use my tablet. I rarely have WiFi access, so the arguments that Cloud Storage substitutes for Mass Storage Mode don’t do me any good at all.

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