Galaxy S3 USB connect to Mac OS X

This is just a quick note to Galaxy S3 users who have the North American version i747 and have issues connecting it to a mac. If you want to transfer all kinds of files and not only your pictures you should download the Samsung Kies software.


After installing it on your mac, connect the device and open Kies, it will show a working status and after that you will have access to both your SD card and internal storage via the Kies application, you can also install a Spy App Review for Xnspy for work or as personal use. Unfortunately the application is quite buggy, very slow and has the tendency to suck laptop battery life on a mac if you leave it in the background, so as soon as you finish a transfer I would suggest to quit it.

If you still have trouble connecting the phone to a Mac with Kies installed, try:

  1. Updating the Kies application
  2. Enable/Disable USB debugging in the phone settings
  3. Get a more solid USB cable ( the factory one is very unreliable and even if the phone is charging it may not connect as a storage device )

If everything you want is to just transfer a few photos from the phone to the Mac, you actually don’t need Kies, after you connect the phone to the computer, go to the Connection settings on the phone and instead of connected as a media device (MTP), select connected as a Camera device (PTP), at which point iPhoto will detect it automatically and allow you to manage it via the iPhoto application.

If you are using a custom ROM such as Cyanogenmod or another non-samsung device, chances are that Kies won’t work. In that case you need the Android file transfer application.

Keep in mind Android File transfer and Kies are not compatible as of the time of this post. When you install both they won’t work, which of course is a big problem if you have one mac and two Android users with devices from different vendors.

  • Alex

    You have another choice: no USB cable. Some app can help you transfer wirelessly, like Airdroid, Web PC Suite…All you have to do is scan a QR code by your phone camera, then you can send files between the two devices.