I have an Android phone with a broken screen, but the rest of the device still works. It has nearly 256 GB of free storage, and I'd like to use it to store my music and stream or access that library wirelessly from my newer phone, which only has 128 GB of storage. The damaged phone can still be controlled through scrcpy, so setting it up isn't impossible. Is there an app or another way to turn it into a simple music server?
3 Answers
A USB flash drive or simply streaming the music from another device would be easier, but using the old phone is still reasonable if you already have it. Since you don’t have a huge library, a lightweight server app should be enough and avoids buying extra storage.
Emby could work well for this. You can install it on the old phone, add your music library, and stream the files to another device over your local network. The basic setup is free.
You could also use a media-server app such as Emby to make the phone act as a little personal music server. It’s a fun way to reuse the hardware, although keeping the phone powered and connected to Wi-Fi will be important.
That’s exactly the kind of project I had in mind. I’m not worried about it being the most practical option—I’d rather reuse the phone and learn something while setting it up.
I’d prefer using the hardware I already own instead of buying something else. It sounds like a fun setup, even if it’s more involved than the simplest solution.