Is Your Android Phone Not Showing up on PC? Try to Fix It Now!

Android Not Showing up on PC

Sometimes you need to transfer files from your PC to an Android phone or vice versa. Usually, you choose to use a USB cable to connect them for data transfer. In most cases, the connection will work seamlessly. However, sometimes you may say – my phone is connected to my computer but I can’t see it.

What To Do When Your Phone Won't Connect To Computer

You may find your phone won't connect to computer sometimes; can you fix this problem and finally make the phone showing up on PC?

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Ideally, Windows will immediately treat the Android phone as an MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) connection when connecting the phone to a PC and the necessary drivers will be installed automatically so that it can show in Windows Explorer.

But sometimes there is an issue with a USB cable or port, outdated driver, connection mode, etc., leading to Android not showing up on PC. Fortunately, you can fix the computer not recognizing phone issue by following some useful methods. Now, let’s see them from the following part.

Solutions to Android Phone Not Showing up on PC

Before troubleshooting the issue, you can restart your computer and Android phone. This is helpful to refresh the operating system and remove any corrupt temporary data that may lead to the problem.

Use Another USB Cord or Port

A faulty USB cord may lead to Android not showing up on PC and you can eliminate this possibility.

Just use a different USB cable to connect your Android phone and PC. Or connect the phone to another USB port. Go to check if the phone is showing up in Windows Explorer. If the Android phone won’t show up on computer, try other solutions.

Clean the USB Port

If the USB port of your phone or PC is blocked by dirt or debris, the connection between the phone and PC can be prevented and file transfer may fail. Just see if you can find anything that shouldn’t be there. If yes, use a toothpick to remove any debris.

Check the Connection Mode

If your Android phone cannot show up on your computer, perhaps you use the incorrect connection mode.

When plugging your phone to a computer, you may see some different modes – charging only, MTP, PTP, and MIDI. You should choose MTP. Depending on different manufacturers, the option may be different and can be Transfer files or Device File Transfer.

Update MTP Drivers

If all of these methods don’t work, perhaps the issue of Android phone not showing up on PC is caused by the MTP driver issue.

Step 1: Go to Control Panel and choose Devices and Printers.

Step 2: If you see the name of your Android phone, it means the MTP connection is working. If it is named Unspecified or MTP, you need to update some drivers.

Step 3: Go to Device Manager, expand Portable Devices, and see if your phone is here. Or you can look for an entry with ADB in the name when the tab is not available.

Step 4: If there is a yellow exclamation mark or the real name of your device is not seen, right-click it and choose Update driver.

Step 5: Choose Browse my computer for driver software > Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.

Step 6: Choose Android Device > MTP USB Device.

Step 7: Then, the new driver will be installed and the Android phone will be seen as a multimedia device in Windows Manager.

Final Words

Is Android phone not showing up on PC? After trying these solutions above, you should easily fix this issue. We hope this post is helpful to you.