Refresh Android mediastore using adb

I'm using adb to sync music on an android phone. Essentially, I rm the existing music directory and push replacement music files.

I'd like to be able to use adb to force a rescan, so that the google music player (and other apps) works properly with the new songs and playlists.

According to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3300137/how-can-i-refresh-mediastore-on-android you can force a rescan by broadcasting an appropriate intent.

adb provides 'shell am broadcast', which would seem to allow me to force a rescan from adb.

Alternatively I could run a rescan app or reboot, but I'd like to trigger the rescan from adb

What adb command should I issue? The music files and playlists are all in /sdcard/music.

The rescan apps use a media mount intent to kick off the media scanner. You can use am broadcast to send the same intent.

The command is:

adb shell am broadcast -a android.intent.action.MEDIA_MOUNTED -d file:///sdcard

The MEDIA_MOUNTED intent is no longer permitted (post KitKat) for non-system apps; try this instead.

It’s not recursive, though, and has to be run on the exact_file_name, so it’s not a good replacement.

adb shell am broadcast \
    -a android.intent.action.MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE \
    -d file:///mnt/sdcard/Music/<exact_file_name>

If you need to rescan recursively, you can use this command (fix paths accordingly):

adb shell "find /mnt/sdcard/Music/ -exec am broadcast \
    -a android.intent.action.MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE \
    -d file://{} \\;"

Or like this (if above won't work for you):

adb shell "find /mnt/sdcard/Music/ | while read f; do \
    am broadcast -a android.intent.action.MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE \
    -d \"file://${f}\"; done"

On some Samsung mobiles, you can get a full rescan like this:

am broadcast -a com.samsung.intent.action.MTP_FILE_SCAN -n com.android.providers.media/.MediaScannerReceiver

If you have rooted your phone, you can use this script I’ve written, which has the advantage of keeping track of which files have already been updated:

#!/system/bin/env busybox ash

MUSIC_LIBRARY=/sdcard/MusicLibrary

LAST_UPDATE="$(stat -c %Y "$MUSIC_LIBRARY/.last-update")"

find "$MUSIC_LIBRARY" -type f ! -iname ".last-update" | (
  while read f; do
    if ! test "$LAST_UPDATE" -ge "$(stat -c %Y "$f")"; then
      am broadcast -a android.intent.action.MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE -d "file://$f"
      touch "$f"
    else
      echo "Not updated: \`$f'"
    fi
  done
)

touch "$MUSIC_LIBRARY/.last-update"

Here's a Python script called adb-scan. It uses adb to ask the Android device to rescan the given files.

Example usage:

$ adb-scan Notifications/\*.mp3
Broadcasting: Intent { act=android.intent.action.MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE dat=file:///sdcard/Notifications/cough.mp3 flg=0x400000 }
Broadcast completed: result=0
Broadcasting: Intent { act=android.intent.action.MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE dat=file:///sdcard/Notifications/harmonica3.mp3 flg=0x400000 }
Broadcast completed: result=0
Broadcasting: Intent { act=android.intent.action.MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE dat=file:///sdcard/Notifications/shhh.mp3 flg=0x400000 }
Broadcast completed: result=0
$

Here's the script:

#!/usr/bin/python3
#
# Ask the Android media scanner to check the given files.
#
import sys
import os
import re

sys.argv.pop(0)

if not sys.argv:
   sys.exit('usage: adb-scan files...')

intent = 'android.intent.action.MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE'

# Quote certain special characters such as spaces, backslashes and quotes.  In
# particular, don't quote '*' because we want that to be expanded on the
# Android device.
def cleanup(arg):
   if not arg.startswith('/'):
      arg = '/sdcard/' + arg
   arg = re.sub("[ \\'\"]", lambda x: '\\' + x.group(0), arg)
   return arg

script = '''
for i in {args}; do
    [ -e "$i" ] || echo "warning: no such file: $i"
    am broadcast -a "{intent}" -d "file://$i"
done
'''.format(args=' '.join(map(cleanup, sys.argv)),
           intent=intent)

cmd = ['adb', 'shell', script]
os.execvp(cmd[0], cmd)