Changing folders on a USB drive when the car is in motion

[sonnyt]

I apologize if this has been asked already but I couldn't find it. I am a first time Ford owner and love my 2020 Ford Explorer ST. But there is one music thing that is driving me crazy! I put my music in folders on a USB drive. I'm simply trying to change folders while the car is in motion. "explore device" (under new search) which is the way to generally do this is disabled when the car is in motion. It seems kinda silly for it to be disabled when there are plenty of other list-oriented functions that are not disabled but that's a side note!!

There doesn't appear to be a voice command to do this. Outside of making playlists or searching by artist (which doesn't work well for a mix of artists that might be in one folder) is there anyway to do this?

Much thanks for any help!! Merry Christmas to those observing!

Sonny

 

[UofMEngineer]

Nope. While actively moving you’re limited to the current “playlist” with the “Browse” button. While driving you can get to artist, album or genre by voice but the scrolling is still limited as it is in the other areas of the system.

 

[sonnyt]

Nope. While actively moving you’re limited to the current “playlist” with the “Browse” button. While driving you can get to artist, album or genre by voice but the scrolling is still limited as it is in the other areas of the system.

Thank you for your response. It would be nice to have a voice command option "Play Folder <foldername>" !!

 

[peterk9]

Thank you for your response. It would be nice to have a voice command option "Play Folder <foldername>" !!

Welcome to the Forum Sonny.
Merry Christmas to you as well.

Peter

 

[UofMEngineer]

Thank you for your response. It would be nice to have a voice command option "Play Folder <foldername>" !!

Folder names aren’t available, so not possible unfortunately. That’s where using the genre can help. Genre can be anything, so say you have a folder “90’s Music” you can tag all the media in there with “90’s Music” as genre then use a “Play 90’s Music” command. Roundabout way.

 

[sonnyt]

Folder names aren’t available, so not possible unfortunately. That’s where using the genre can help. Genre can be anything, so say you have a folder “90’s Music” you can tag all the media in there with “90’s Music” as genre then use a “Play 90’s Music” command. Roundabout way.

Is that true? You can display a list of folders when you explore device. So perhaps the voice command would be "Display Folders" like you can do with playlists. Thanks!

 

[ArvadaMike]

Is that true? You can display a list of folders when you explore device. So perhaps the voice command would be "Display Folders" like you can do with playlists. Thanks!

UofMEngineer is on the Sync development team. I asked him the same questions about folders before, and the answer he provided now is the same as he provided me then. The folder browsing option is simply not available through voice commands; only through the GUI, which is not available when you're moving. It is a source of minor irritation for me too, and I'd like to see Ford change that behavior if they are able. I would imagine for voice commands, they are only reading MP3 tags. Not sure how much it would take to be able to somehow read folder names. Seems like it's doable, since the OS is reading folder names for the GUI interface, but UofMEngineer would know better than I if that would ever be possible.

 

[sonnyt]

UofMEngineer is on the Sync development team. I asked him the same questions about folders before, and the answer he provided now is the same as he provided me then. The folder browsing option is simply not available through voice commands; only through the GUI, which is not available when you're moving. It is a source of minor irritation for me too, and I'd like to see Ford change that behavior if they are able. I would imagine for voice commands, they are only reading MP3 tags. Not sure how much it would take to be able to somehow read folder names. Seems like it's doable, since the OS is reading folder names for the GUI interface, but UofMEngineer would know better than I if that would ever be possible.

Thanks for the info and support! Hopefully, Ford will add this capability to the next release!!

 

[UofMEngineer]

UofMEngineer is on the Sync development team. I asked him the same questions about folders before, and the answer he provided now is the same as he provided me then. The folder browsing option is simply not available through voice commands; only through the GUI, which is not available when you're moving. It is a source of minor irritation for me too, and I'd like to see Ford change that behavior if they are able. I would imagine for voice commands, they are only reading MP3 tags. Not sure how much it would take to be able to somehow read folder names. Seems like it's doable, since the OS is reading folder names for the GUI interface, but UofMEngineer would know better than I if that would ever be possible.

So, we rely on what information we get when the device is indexed. Folder names and the like aren't there for voice, hence no folder browsing. I think MFT may have had that, but it was removed? Not sure, before my time. The vast majority of folks use the tag data for genre, artist, etc.