How to format USB drives for Honda audio systems

USB audio is a great option for keeping your favorite music ready, without having to rely on the radio or Spotify on your phone. It is the spiritual successor to keeping CDs in the car, especially for cars that no longer have CD drives. However, there are a few problems that need to be addressed when loading mp3s onto a drive.

1. Remove dotfiles

Honda audio system showing dotfiles in the music directory

On macOS, when you open a drive in Finder, it will create hidden dotfiles in all directories. These will show up in the Honda audio system UI unless they are removed. Run the dot_clean command on the drive to remove these files, e.g.

dot_clean /Volumes/Samsung USB

(note: you may need to grant Full Disk Access to Terminal if you run into permission errors)

2. Sort files based on filename

Honda audio system showing files in random order

Now that the dotfiles are removed, we see that the files appear in random order. This is because files are sorted by date rather than by filename. To fix this, we will need to install and run the utility, fatsort. If you have Homebrew, you can install with:

brew install fatsort

Then we need to run fatsort on the device path. Find the device path using mount:

mount

Now that we have the device path (/dev/disk4s1 on my machine), we can unmount the drive and run fatsort with sudo:

diskutil unmount /dev/disk4s1
sudo fatsort -cfn /dev/disk4s1

3. Enjoy!

Honda audio system showing files sorted by name

Files should now be sorted and ready to go!

4. (optional) Use a compact USB drive

Left: regular USB drive. Right: compact USB drive

I also recommend using a compact USB drive like with the SanDisk Cruzer Fit to minimize chances of bumping into it and damaging the port.