Got a new Amazon Kindle for Christmas and I love it. I’m supposed to be able to plug it into my Mac and access the files — and more importantly copy some of my music and photos onto the device. But I plug in my Amazon Kindle Fire and the Mac system sees nothing. No device, not even an error message. Help!
Congrats on what sounds like a very nice present: the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Fire 8 are very nice tablets with vivid color screens and, of course, tight integration with the Amazon experience, both books through Kindle and shopping through the various Amazon apps you can download. Under the hood, it turns out that your Kindle is running a custom version of Android, the same operating system that powers Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphones and LG wearables, televisions and much more.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that Apple doesn’t seem to be much of a fan of the Google-created Android operating system and while you can plug in a Windows hard drive and have it show up on your Mac system without fuss, Android requires that you actually download a new program and use that to access Android-based devices when hooked up to a Mac OS X system, even in 10.11 El Capitan.
Let me show you the steps as it’s pretty easy once you know where to grab the app.
First off, here’s my Finder window with an Amazon Kindle Fire 8 HD plugged in to my MacBook Pro:
Lots of files, folders, devices, etc. But no Kindle device.
To get that, you’ll need to get a program called Android File Transfer and install it. Interestingly, it’s not available in the App Store either, so you’ll have to go old school and download it yourself. The link you need is at android.com or you can just click on this graphic:
Once it’s downloaded, you’ll have a new device on your Desktop.
Double-click to open it and this is what you’ll see:
This is the easy app installation process on the Mac: Just click and drag the Android File Transfer program icon onto the Applications icon and it’ll be installed on your computer in, yes, your Applications folder.
Once done, it might launch (or you can launch it directly from Applications), but without an Android device like the Kindle plugged in, all you’ll get is this:
No worries, because when you do now plug in your Kindle Fire, it’ll show up with a Finder-like window within the Android File Transfer app:
At this point it’s super easy to dig around, find the folders you want (like “Movies” or “Pictures”) then either copy files off the Kindle Fire by dragging them onto your Desktop, or copy them onto the Kindle by dragging them from your Mac system to the appropriate folder or sub-folder.
Not as elegant as it could be — I think Amazon could write a custom Kindle-themed program for the Mac that works atop this relatively crude solution, and Apple could just add support for Android file systems in the OS — but with a little bit of poking around, you’ll get the hang of it!
And enjoy your Kindle Fire!
I transferred my movie files into the “Movies” folder on Kindle 10, but can’t find them to play…..please share how to find the movies during my upcoming flight…..thanks.
You can try MacDroid. It is very convenient to work with android devices when you have a Mac OS. Good alternative to Android file transfer. https://www.macdroid.app/android-file-transfer/
Dave, These instructions were beyond fantastic. Simple to follow, and now I have all my files in a folder in my Fire. Thank you so much.
Dave, it worked the first time thanks but the second time around it said somett hit big like MTP error when I plugged my kindle in. Any ideas please?
Did you try restarting your Mac system?
No worries, because when you do now plug in your Kindle Fire, it’ll show up with a Finder-like window within the Android File Transfer app
I can not get this Android File transfer app to open up and show me the finder like
window, any hints?
Thanks
TERRy
Using a Mac mojave 10.14
Thanks
I have a book saved as a mobi file. I got the Android app as you suggested and it did show up on my Mac but it says it cannot copy the mobi file. Any ideas?
Do you want to read the book on your Mac? Or an Android phone? I’m a bit confused…
Your solution was easy and worked like a charm. Thank you so much.
IMac to Kindle:
How can I copy files from my iMac iTunes? No matter which piece I try to drag&drop I get the error message ‘Could Not Copy File’,
iMac won’t recognise Fire 7 no matter what, so cannot transfer content from computer to tablet. Frustrating.
Have you tried unpairing the Fire 7 from your Amazon account and re-connecting it to see if that fixes the problem?
Hi Terry,
I have the same problem and I am using High Sierra 10.13.6. I get as far as the No Android Device Found window and can’t see what is supposed to follow upon plugging in the cable. I have tried different cables thinking it is the cable but alas no luck. Help please. Or alternative suggestions Dave.
Sylvia Kaplan
Dave,
How do you unpair your Fire from your Amazon account? I’m not totally unsavvy but haven’t been able to figure out how to do that.
Thanks for your help. I see I’m not the only one struggling with file transfer.
Sylvia
Dave,
How do you unpair your Fire from your Amazon account? I’m not totally unsavvy but haven’t been able to figure out how to do that.
Thanks for your help. I see I’m not the only one struggling with this.
Sylvia
For some reason the movies that i dl onto my mac will not transfer to this android file transfer program. any ideas?
Even after Android File Transfer is installed, I continue to get “No Android device found.” The cable is the one that came with the Kindle Fire, and it charges, but doesn’t seem interested in exchanging information. I’m using OS Sierra, version 10.12.4.
…very frustrating.
Dave, these instructions were fantastic! Thanks so much for the step by step! I am now very happy to have a bunch of photos from my Mac on my Kindle Fire!
I downloaded the file transfer app but when I try to open it, it will not open. It starts to open, then just quits. My Mac has OS 10.5.8 which I know is old, but should still work right? I tried a couple of different cables. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.