The VideoLAN Forums

*I have about 1tb worth of music files on a SD card, which until recently I played them without any problems on my Galaxy Note 9 using vlc.

I recently bought the new Galaxy s23 ultra phone. Since this phone doesn't have a SD card slot, I connected the card to the phone as a USB OTG (on-the-go) device. When I opened vlc, the card correctly showed up as such, but for some reason vlc cannot access the files on the card.

Is this a vlc or an Android limitation? Anyway to work around it?

> new ultra phone

Modern Android versions require that you give an app permission to gain access to a removable drive. Most apps respond to a permission violation by throwing up the form you use to grant this permission then return into the app. I don't recall if VLC does but I have often played music over OTG.

Thanks for the reply. After some tinkering with the settings, I managed to resolve the issue, but in a rather curious way I still don't quite understand.

Now, whenever I plug in my SD card, two folders in VLC show up: one is labeled USB, the other OTG. I can see the content of my SD card as well as play the music files in the USB folder, but not in the OTG folder.

Why would two separate folders show up in VLC? What is the purpose of the OTG folder? I'd appreciate it if someone could explain what is going on here.

Developers will want to know your Android and VLC version number to begin to solve this.

Now, whenever I plug in my SD card, two folders in VLC show up: one is labeled USB, the other OTG. I can see the content of my SD card as well as play the music files in the USB folder, but not in the OTG folder.

Why would two separate folders show up in VLC?

Because that's the way the system call them. You should have the exact same thing in your "Files" app.