How to use the "Folders" in the music player of a Samsung Galaxy S2

Yesterday I showed you how to sort the songs on your Samsung Galaxy S2 into things like "Genre" or "Year" and quickly mentioned the method of sorting the songs by "Folder". Now using the "Folder" option is a bit different to using the other options as the other options take are list from the tags the songs have however the "Folder" is dependent on the actual "Folder" the songs are kept in.

To explain this in a simple way you need to go onto your PC or Laptop and look at your music folders. In my case I have folders for specific artists mainly though I also have specific folders for things like "Podcasts" and "Comedy music". Originally these were made to keep my computer slightly tidier than it would have been to have 100's of Podcasts lying around the place though when put onto the phone they serve a second purpose of grouping things together.

If you look at the screen shot to the left that we have here (from Scott's phone which is genuinely a mess) you'll see most of the folders just correspond to albums such as "Healthy in Paranoid Times" by Our Lady Peace and "Hot Fuss" by The Killers. Though you can also see that he has a folder called "Kaiser Chiefs", this folder just keep all the tracks by the Kaiser Chiefs in one place so that they are easy to play together (and many of the lack the correct "Artist" tag).

What you need to do on your computer to create these "Folders" is create a folder on your computer as you normally would then place all the tracks you want into the same folder. Then copy the tracks into your phones music folder.
Alternatively you could use an explorer or the "My Files" app on your phone to create new "Folders" in your main music folder on your phone to create these pseudo playlists.

How to sort songs on a Samsung Galaxy S2

A while ago Scott showed you all how to add music to a Samsung Galaxy S2 and now I'm going to show you how you can sort your music by Genre, Composer, Folder or even the Year. This does, in theory make it easier for you to make specialised play lists on your computer and transfer them over (which I will explain in a future guide).

As you may expect this guide starts at the "Music" app so make sure to open up the app so you see a screen something like the one on the let handside. When you're here you need to press the phone's "Menu" button which will open up an options menu at the bottom of the screen. From this menu you will

need to select "Settings" which will on up a screen with 4 more options in a list. You will be able to see options for "Equaliser", "Sound effect", "Music menu" and "Visualisation", from here select "Music menu".

The "Music menu" should give you a list of things, such as
"Albums", "Artists" and "Genres" (see the picture on the right of this paragraph for more of the list) each with a tick box. From here you need to select the options you want to be able to use, personally I'd advise "Albums", "Artists" and "Genres" though you may wish to select "Year" if you have a particular year that you love.

When you've selected all the options you'd like to use you need to go back to your music player screen then use your finger to scroll across the options at the top. You need to scroll things like "Artist" across and you'll soon come to the new options that you added from the "Music menu".

One thing to note before you become hugely comfortable about this. If you've not sorted your music properly (like Scott who took these screenshots) you may notice that some of the Genre's, Artists and Albums  (and everything else) can be a bit of a mess to say the least.

Which folders do things go in on a Samsung Galaxy S2?

This site keeps getting people who have been searching for Folders on Samsung Galaxy S2 so lets if we can help.

This is just a list of the default registry files on the phone nothing else. The first list shows the directory from a Windows 7 (hence the "Computer") point of view the second is how you find it by using the phone.

Music: Computer\GT-I9100\Phone\Samsung\Music
Screen Captures: Computer\GT-I9100\Phone\ScreenCapture
Photographs: Computer\GT-I9100\Phone\DCIM\Camera (stored as JPEG)
Videos: Computer\GT-I9100\Phone\DCIM\Camera (stored as MP4)
Items downloaded via Opera: Computer\GT-I9100\Phone\download
Items downloaded via Bluetooth: Computer\GT-I9100\Phone\bluetooth

To find the items on your phone they can all be found via the "Gallery" application or the "Music" application.

How do I put music onto my Samsung Galaxy S2? (Via USB cable)

So you've got yourself a brand new Samsung Galaxy S2 android smartphone and you want to make the most of the 16GB internal memory by using it to store some of your MP3's and even use it as an MP3 player to replace your iPod. But how exactly do we put our music from our computer to our Samsung Galaxy SII?

Firstly we are going to look at the USB method of file transferring and to start with you will need to connect your phone to your laptop or PC via a USB-to-USB mini cable. If you've done this correctly you phone will look like the image to the right.
When you've connected your phone and your computer you will need to locate your phone in your computer. When you have located it (it will often show up as "GT-I9100") double click it to explore then find the "Samsung" folder which should have a folder called music in (if not you can create one).

Whilst in this folder you can feel free to copy and paste all your music from your computer to your folder as you can see in the image to the right which contains the vast majority of my music collection (yeah I like Apologetix).

I hope this answers the question of "How do I put my music on to my Samsung Galaxy S2?" Of course you can open up the same Music folder and delete things from the phone in the same way.

For those wondering on the full directory of the music folder, it's:
Computer\GT-I9100\Phone\Samsung\Music