Windows Portable Devices

Windows Portable Devices

Windows Portable Devices is a new way for a computer to communicate with attached media and storage devices. This system supersedes both Windows Media Device Manager and Windows Image Acquisition by providing a flexible, robust way for a computer to communicate with music players, storage devices, mobile phones, cameras, and many other types of connected devices.

Applications built on Windows Portable Devices can explore a device, send and receive content, and even control the device—for example, take a picture or send a text message. The system is designed to be flexible—so that many types of devices can be explored—and extensible—so that driver developers can define their own custom properties and commands for custom devices.

Applications built on Windows Media Device Manager or Windows Image Acquisition can access Windows Portable Devices through a compatibility layer.

Microsoft provides several drivers for standard protocols and devices, including Media Transport Protocol (MTP) devices and Mass Storage Class (MSC) devices. If you are familiar with the User-Mode Driver Framework, you can develop your own drivers for custom devices.

The following table lists the main topics of this documentation.