Is it possible to play music from a USB stick?

[ncrunner]

Sometimes I like to leave my phone at home and just pretend it's 1997 again. Is it possible to plug a USB-stick into the 4Runner and play music and podcasts from that?

 

[Administrator]

Yes, plug a USB-C memory stick into the side of the screen and you can play music from it. Make sure it's in Fat32 format.

 

[ncrunner]

That's great, thanks.

 

[kzrman]

Here in the mountains of Maine I practically can't get any radio stations, so this is a nice option. Either that or XM radio.

 

[vready]

Once you plug the USB-C stick in, go into Music and click the Source button and it'll show up there based on the volume name.

I picked up one of these PNY Elite-X Fit Type-C USB 3.2 Flash Drives with 256GB capacity because it can hold a lot of music and has a very compact profile that blends right in with the rest of the interior. Mine has 2,200 audio CD's ripped to MP3, with room to add more...

I just plug it in with the PNY logo facing away so it's all black

 

[Hacksaw]

Once you plug the USB-C stick in, go into Music and click the Source button and it'll show up there based on the volume name.

I picked up one of these PNY Elite-X Fit Type-C USB 3.2 Flash Drives with 256GB capacity because it can hold a lot of music and has a very compact profile that blends right in with the rest of the interior. Mine has 2,200 audio CD's ripped to MP3, with room to add more...

I just plug it in with the PNY logo facing away so it's all black

According to the manual, the 4runner supports a maximum of 32GB USB stick for music. Can you confirm that you can see more than 32GB of music files using this 256GB USB flash drive plugged into the 14" monitor's USB-C slot?

 

[vready]

Yes. It works just fine. I have 180GB of music on my memory stick and it indexes and plays the MP3 files no problem.

 

[Hacksaw]

Yes. It works just fine. I have 180GB of music on my memory stick and it indexes and plays the MP3 files no problem.

Excellent; thanks for confirming.

 

[Hacksaw]

Yes. It works just fine. I have 180GB of music on my memory stick and it indexes and plays the MP3 files no problem.

@vready , a couple other questions when you have a moment:

Since the manual says the USB flash must be formatted FAT32 (32GB size limit), but your 256GB USB works, it can't actually be limited at FAT32 so is your USB formatted exFAT or NTFS? I'll just copy whichever one works for you.

And just so I don't have to fumble around with the file structure, how do you have your music organized?

I have a Node2i music player for my home audio system, with about 150GB of FLAC files on an SSD, organized as:
Folder Level 1 is Artist name.
Folder Level 2 is a folder named as each album by the artist. And within level 2 I have all the song files as FLAC files, and a file called "folder.jpg" in each album folder which is the album cover art.
I was hoping just to copy that exactly as it currently is on the SSD, to the 256GB USB flash.

 

[vready]

My memory stick is formatted FAT32 (done using Disk Utility in MacOS 15). As far as I know, there isn't a 32GB limit on FAT32, so it works just fine.

The master copy of my music collection is stored on a NAS in FLAC format, but I ripped all of it (2,200 CDs worth) into MP3 format, which is what I copied onto the USB memory stick. The folder structure is as you describe:

Artist > Album(s) > Tracks with a folder.jpg file with the cover art.

When I ripped the FLAC files to MP3, I also embedded the album artwork into each of the MP3 files, which helps it show up on the infotainment screen, although, Toyota also seems to use the Gracenote database to pull some of that info, too.

Here are a few screenshots to answer your questions:

 

[Hacksaw]

Thanks a lot for that info! I just looked it up and the 32GB FAT32 limit is a windows thing, but you can apparently get around it with a 3rd party tool called Rufus.

Did you convert everything to mp3 just because the size, with all files as FLAC, was >256GB of the flash drive?

That conversion must have taken hours! What mp3 bitrate did you convert to?

If I also convert all FLAC to mp3 and embed the album art, I'd have to find a utility. Hmmm, I have dBPowerAmp and it looks like it can convert FLAC to mp3 with embedded album art. Hopefully as a batch.

 

[vready]

DBPowerAmp is what I used to convert my FLAC files to MP3. I did it at a 320Kbps and embedded the album art. I'm not certain the 4Runner would support FLAC files natively, but even if it did, my collection weighs in at 440GB so it made sense to go to MP3. The fidelity is fine...

 

[Hacksaw]

DBPowerAmp is what I used to convert my FLAC files to MP3. I did it at a 320Kbps and embedded the album art. I'm not certain the 4Runner would support FLAC files natively, but even if it did, my collection weighs in at 440GB so it made sense to go to MP3. The fidelity is fine...

Thanks again for the tip that the 32GB limit in the manual isn't accurate. 256GB USB flash, formatted FAT32 using Rufus, is up and running. It comprehends FLAC files fine. I put a few M3U playlist files in the root directory but it doesn't seem to recognize them. Bummer. I guess I could create an artist called "AAAplaylist," then subdirs playlist1,2,3 etc, with copies of the songs in each playlist.

With your giant collection of 2200 albums, have you found a way to navigate it easily? The font is so big, it takes forever to swipe to an artist/album in the alphabetized list, even with my collection that is probably 1/4 that size. Is there a way to use voice commands to get the screen to show albums for a spoken artist name, or go to a list of songs in an album?

Shuffle play isn't working the way I was expecting so I guess I'll need to find it in the manual. Must be some other settings somewhere.

 

[Hacksaw]

DBPowerAmp is what I used to convert my FLAC files to MP3. I did it at a 320Kbps and embedded the album art. I'm not certain the 4Runner would support FLAC files natively, but even if it did, my collection weighs in at 440GB so it made sense to go to MP3. The fidelity is fine...

vready, are you able to get it to random play across your whole collection? I can only get random play within an album, or to play an entire album and then move to playing in full the next album alphabetically.

How about voice commands for you?
And I am unable to get any voice commands, like play artistX (expecting it will random play all songs by that artist), or play songY, or play albumZ to work. It either says it can't understand me or makes some irrelevant comment about navigation. The manual (pg 42 of MM manual) seems to indicate "play" is a keyword but the only voice command I can get to work with USB music is NEXT (within the current album), but I can't get PREVIOUS to work.