Turn any USB drive into a media player in 30 seconds Ford SYNC 3 & 4 Audio 

Ford could definitely go by the saying “if something isn’t broke don’t try to fix it” more often. Awesome vid!

Google search brought me here. My 2020 F-150 wasn't recognzing all my mp3's I had on my USB drive. Did as you directed and wallah! Thank you kind sir!

Funny...the first thing I got rid of was the stock stereo. Great video!

Thank you for the very helpful video. The reformating on a Mac (of course) is just a little more complicated. More steps! Fun how Ford will only read XFAT while my Honda will read anything you plug into it! Thanks again.

Hot damn! I tried to get my Sony mp3 to work in my 2019 Escape. The car recognized it, and it tried to play but the mp3 would shut off and just charge. It has a speaker jack and usb port but the manual said the thing should play just with the usb port hooked up. And now I find out that it's another one of Ford's "great and helpful ideas" to mess it up so we're forced to subscribe to Apple/Pandora/SiriuxXM in order to hear our music. I love this idea of using an thumb drive and I'm gonna reformat one now and once it's playing in my Escape, laugh HA HA at Ford like Nelson! :~) Thank you sir!

I had a 2010 F150 xlt with 6 disk CD and Sync. The radio crapped out a few years ago and I added a cheap Boss Audio touchscreen radio from Crutchfield. The cool thing was that the Boss radio had a slot for a micro SD card. I had my whole music library on there. I just bought a used 2019 F150 xlt and found this video looking for a way to add a jump drive or hard drive. Thanks for all the info!

Thank you, my 2022 Ecosport would not recognise my own playlists. Formatted the drive as you said, reloaded my own playlist (stored in a folder under the playlist names). Put it in the car, go to the bottom of the menu and search, there they all are under their playlist names. Cheers.

Many headunits, especially aftermarket require exFAT, good advice to get usb working ! Good tip

Just got a brand new car and couldn't believe it wouldn't play any of the mp3 thanks for the heads up!

Awesome to the point video. Ive never used a usb in the car but have reasons to for a few things now and it would only play 1 track of the 15 which was a .wav file and the rest are .mp3. Will try this later

Great tip. Thanks

Hey Tony! You saved my bacon!!!!😁👍

Thanks. It works for the FM transmitter USB after converted to exFAT.

I copied my Windows Media Player directory to a USB drive. The top level directory is music and all albums are contained in directories under that. There is also a playlists directory containing WMP playlists. Since Sync is Windows it recognizes that format. I went one step further and wrote a C# program to create playlists. I then store them in the x:\music\playlists directory and it finds them just fine. Been using this since 2015.

Cool technology 😎

Wonderful informative video. Can you tell me if it will play M3U playlist files off the flash drive using voice command? I have a 2012 Ford Edge Limited and I can voice command songs, artists, playlists or albums. Looking for a replacement vehicle for my 2000 Alero but am spoiled by the flash drive functionality offered by Ford (but seemingly no one else). Any additional info would be GREATLY appreciated! Also interested in the Alexa functionality if you know anything about that. Thanks in advance.

You the MAN

I've been using a thumb drive since I bought my car. It's formatted as NTFS, works fine. Video files don't work though, only audio.

When I had the Ford Focus 3 in the manual the audio/sync section it is mention to format the USB stick as EXFAT. What it did not say is how to use playlist. I found on the internet how to do that with Playlist Creator 3.6.2 and the correct settings. It also works in my Ford Mondeo MK5 with sync 3.4.

That looks great! But I got one question, if I started using apple car play, will I be able to listen to media from the usb at the same time?

I'm using a 128gb thumb drive, of which about 86gb is being used. When playing music in my Mach-E, it will randomly skip some songs in both playlists and if playing an album. It does this on every thumb drive I've tried, all formatted to exFAT. If I arrow back, it will play the song just fine. I've analyzed the playlists in Notepad and checked the files of songs that are skipped. Everything is fine there. Any ideas what is causing this to happen?

Thanks for the workaround! Do videos actually play? I wonder what format sync 3.4 supports.

Hey thanks from across the pond! I'm considering a mustang preferably a mach 1 and this is great to know otherwise I'd be really pissed! It really does amaze me thought (I'm a bit older than you) how everytime technology advances we seem to also take a step backwards in the simplicity of something, also we seem to lose our freedom of choice, such as ford pushes a over the air update and screws our preferences without even asking the customer who splashed their cash on the car, and ford no longer owns it so how dare they just remove what we like. All companies seem to be doing this now messing with my shit with permission! OK Rant over and counting to 100. Thanks for the video.

hey love your groups on your USB! Can I get your USB contents!?

The main advantage of using Mach 1 is that you don't need a radio ;-)

I just bought a 2019 Ecoboost Premium and it plays music from a USB just fine. It has Sync 3 version 3.3. After seeing your video, I'm hesitant to do any upgrades. What was the update that you had problems with? Thanks

One question, is there a way I can organize the music on the USB drive so that I can play whole albums and not just random songs?

Question, what if you would get a usb to hdmi converter and get a apple usb converter to plug in into your phone, will you be able to do mirror mode ? Would that be possible ?

Hi Tony, my name is Antonio, I live in Brazil Rio de Janeiro, I just subscribed to your channel, well I don't know if you know anything else here in Brazil, everything is very difficult so I turn to you, I saw the audio video to play in sync 3 but I don't know where to get a cool playlist to put on the USB, and I would also like to put music videos, please could you guide me, thank you in advance, a big hug.

I have a 2017 Explorer with Sync 3, which I formatted as you described. Put the USB drive into the USB port, but the display says the USB device is not compatible. Any ideas?

Curious for input. This worked great for kusic, but video just comes out as audio? Any tip or ideas?.

hey Tony! how it going, I like your information because it too specific to solve the problem, thanks. can you help me please Im try to connect one divice Z6 Pro 48GB HiFi MP3 Music Player with Bluetooth with sync 3 ford f150 2016.

Can the songs be displayed as folder albums. I had a quick play around with it and all my songs came up as one folder(650 songs). I'd like to be able to have it organised in albums. Is this possible??

It's a long shot, but as of today does this method work on sync 3.3 ? Can it play video files like mp4?

Do I have this correct? just load up a USB thumb drive with music, format it correctly, plug it in and it will play AND it will download into the system ?

Hi Tony, why does everytime I do format, the whole saved songs on my USB will be gone

I have iTunes. Will this work under exFAT to allow me to download the songs from iTunes on my computer to play in my car?

5/5/2024 I have a 2021 Ford Mustang GT with a Sync 4 Radio and it plays FAT32 format perfectly. Just have to wait about 30 seconds to index after you plug in. Maybe Ford changed it back.

hmm, I checked that my flashdrive is formatted to exFAT but my 2016 mustang with sync3 is not registering it

My USB only recently stopped resuming song, now everytime i turn on car it starts at first song help!!!!!!

How do you get it to play video on screen?

The new 2022 F-350 works with the usb and my iPod nano. Plug it in hit the little face on the steering wheel and say USB

Amazon music works will too....

Taking away something instead of just fucking leaving it alone.....is fucking mental.

Zune was the first competition apple really had

Are videos working??

And video works too???

I’m going to try this as soon as I have downloaded my must to a thumb drive apple stole all my music that was on iTunes & then told me to subscribe & pay $12.99 AU per month this will give me access to my music plus there’s what a joke it’s all above getting U to subscribe 🤬

Until Spotify, Apple Music, prime music, and even RU-vid music convince ford to push another update so they have a better chance of making money

stupid multimedia cant watch videos from usb on mondeo 2016

On my 2020 Bullitt, all songs from all albums are played in alphabetical order which is ... moronic.

Doesn't do video also

They didn't share it with you when you called them because that particular person (like many) was one of those "essential worker" types who never exerts an ounce of effort to learn anything helpful to customers, unlike the millions of truly essential patriots that made America great.