@penguin42 Specifically, I installed GSConnect on the phone, and tried to install it on my laptop. Some things say it exists, but no command line command seems to exist to invoke it.

I've uninstalled things from my phone ... I have no idea now what may or may not be installed on the laptop ...

@penguin42 And when I had GSConnect on the phone, and followed the instructions for installing it on the laptop, the laptopn installation seemed to succeed, but I could apparently never run it, and GSConnect on the phone never reported seeing anything to connect to.

@penguin42 What firewall? Where?

Also:

$ gnome-shell-extension-gsconnect
gnome-shell-extension-gsconnect: command not found

This despite following all the instructions for apparently installing GSConnect, and it all apparently succeeding.

@ColinTheMathmo Firewall on your PC that *may* stop connections; but hang on - gsconnect is a *graphical* extension to the Gnome graphical shell; I wouldn't expect it to provide any command line; I'd expect it to show up in thesettings page on Gnome (and file manager if that bit is installed)

@penguin42 OK, so I've hit the "Command" key, typed "Extensions" and a thing shows up.

I seem to have paired the phone and the laptop, and I can transfer one file at a time using the interface on the phone.

But I can't select a collection of files and transfer them all, and it's completely opaque as to how I might see the phone as a filesystem from the laptop.

I going to have to give up for the night. It's late, and I have work tomorrow.

If I can, I'll document carefully a process that I go through that confuses me so people can tell me where and why I'm being stupid.

But for now, I'm going to have to sign off.

Thank you ...

@ColinTheMathmo Great so if it's paired the impossible parts should be fine. If I understand correctly, on Gnome, you should be able to install the plugin for the filemanager nautilus; depending how you installed GSConnect that might be a separate thing to install or it might already be there. If it's working then can you see the directory in Nautilus - whenever, no rush.