Android devices stopped showing up in Nautilus (Ubuntu 18.04)

Question

When I connect my Android cellphone to my home PC it does not show up in Nautilus - a nice cellphone icon labeled Android should show up on the sidebar but only additional CD-ROM shows up. No success with a different cellphone and a camera. On My home PC the gmpt can access both the cellphone internal and additional memories but Nautilus cannot do that anymore.

When I connect the phone to my office lapton then it shows up in Nautilus - both Android and CD-ROM shows up. It works perfectly.

Both computers: the same Ubuntu version, the same software installed, the same configurations. Maybe I've messed up something on my home PC while learning Ubuntu?

On my home PC the mtp-detect returns:

libmtp version: 1.1.13
Listing raw device(s)
Device 0 (VID=0b05 and PID=5f02) is a Asus Zenfone 2 ZE550ML (MTP).
   Found 1 device(s):
   Asus: Zenfone 2 ZE550ML (MTP) (0b05:5f02) @ bus 1, dev 18
Attempting to connect device(s)
Android device detected, assigning default bug flags

and a lot of USB low-level info.

lsusb returns:

Bus 001 Device 018: ID 0b05:5f02 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. 

ls -l /dev/bus/usb/001/018 returns:

crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 189, 17 maj 28 20:46 /dev/bus/usb/001/018

On my office laptop the mtp-detect returns:

libmtp version: 1.1.13
Listing raw device(s)
Device 0 (VID=0b05 and PID=5f02) is a Asus Zenfone 2 ZE550ML (MTP).
   Found 1 device(s):
   Asus: Zenfone 2 ZE550ML (MTP) (0b05:5f02) @ bus 1, dev 24
Attempting to connect device(s)
ignoring libusb_claim_interface() = -6PTP_ERROR_IO: failed to open session, trying again after resetting USB interface
LIBMTP libusb: Attempt to reset device
ignoring libusb_claim_interface() = -6LIBMTP PANIC: failed to open session on second attempt
Unable to open raw device 0
OK.

Similar questions, but not helpful: Ubuntu 18.04 does not connect to Android smartphone, Samsung USB not showing in Ubuntu 18.04, Android 6.0 mtp device not showing in Nautilus.

Answer 1

The solution is to reinstall Nautilus:

sudo apt-get remove nautilus
sudo apt-get install nautilus

I've found the results of the installation command especially interesting:

The following additional packages will be installed:
  gvfs-backends
(...)
Selecting previously unselected package gvfs-backends.
(...)
Setting up gvfs-backends (1.36.1-0ubuntu1) ...

It is possible I've removed gvfs-backends unwittingly while playing around with network and SMB.

Answer 2

error returned by libusb_claim_interface() = -6LIBMTP PANIC: Unable to initialize device

Most likely you need to activate MTP file transfer on your Android device by the following steps:

1. Activate Developer Settings by tapping 7 times Build number in About phone.
2. Enable File transfer in USB configuration found in Developer options.

See: How can I access media on my OnePlus 5 with a Ubuntu OS?