Linux Mint disable MTP auto-mount

Older Android devices support USB mass storage for transferring files back and forth with a computer. Modern Android devices use the MTP or PTP protocols — you can choose which one you prefer.

MTP – Media Device

MTP stands for “Media Transfer Protocol.” When Android uses this protocol, it appears to the computer as a “media device.” The media transfer protocol was widely promoted as a standardised protocol for transferring audio files to digital music players using Windows Media Player and similar applications. It was designed to allow other media player companies to compete with Apple’s iPod and iTunes.

This protocol works very differently from USB mass storage. Rather than exposing your Android device’s raw file system to Windows, MTP operates at the file level. Your Android device doesn’t expose its entire storage device to Windows. Instead, when you connect a device to your computer, the computer queries the device and the device responds with a list of files and directories it offers. The computer can download a file — it will request the file from the device, and the device will send the file over the connection. If a computer wants to upload a file, it sends the file to the device and the device chooses to save it. When you delete a file, your computer sends a signal to the device saying, “please delete this file,” and the device can delete it.

Android can choose the files it presents to you, and hide system files so you can’t see or modify them. If you attempt to delete or edit a file that can’t be modified, the device will refuse the request and you’ll see an error message.

Your computer doesn’t need exclusive access to the storage device, so there’s no need to connect the storage, disconnect it, or have separate partitions for different types of data. Android can also use ext4 or any other file system it wants — Windows doesn’t have to understand the file system, only Android does.

In practice, MTP functions a lot like USB mass storage. For example, an MTP device shows up in Windows Explorer so you can browse and transfer files. Linux also include offers for MTP devices via libmtp, which is generally included with popular desktop Linux distributions. MTP devices should appear on your Linux desktop’s file manager, too.

Apple’s Mac OS X is a holdout — it doesn’t include MTP support at all. Apple’s iPod, iPhone, and iPad use their own proprietary syncing protocol along with iTunes, so why would they want to support a competing protocol?

Google provides an Android File Transfer application for Mac OS X. This application is just a simple MTP client, so it will work for transferring files back and forth on a Mac. Google doesn’t provide this application for other operating system because they include MTP support.

Now when you know more about MTP and how/why is done like that here is part that you need to disable auto-mount on Linux

This is specific for Mint[Cinnamon] but should be similar for other desktop environments.

gsettings set org.cinnamon.desktop.media-handling automount-open false
gsettings set org.cinnamon.desktop.media-handling automount false