Sonlit

USB guide

From your phone to the car

Making the file is the easy half. Getting it onto a flash drive, with the right name, in the right folder, on a drive the car will accept, is where nearly every first attempt comes apart — especially from a phone, which has no obvious way to put anything anywhere.

This page is the same whichever tool made your files, and it works today, before either of mine exists. Find your platform, follow the numbered steps, and check the last section if the car does not see the drive.

Before you start

Get the drive right and the rest is copying

The drive

Size
32 GB or less
Format
exFAT or FAT32
Partitions
one
Must not contain
TeslaCam/
Also must not contain
map or firmware update files
Never supported
NTFS

Most retail sticks arrive formatted FAT32 or exFAT already and need nothing done to them. A drive of 32 GB or less is the safe choice because every phone can format one back to FAT32 if it comes to that.

The car

Light shows need
2021.44.25 or newer
Several shows on one drive
2023.44.25 or newer
Lock sound needs
2023.44.25 or newer
Port to use
glovebox USB-A

On many cars built after late 2021, and on every 2025 or later Model Y, the console USB-C ports supply power only. The USB-A port inside the glovebox is the one that reads a drive.

Three things that catch people out

  • Do not use your Dashcam or Sentry drive. A light show drive must not have a top-level TeslaCam folder, and Tesla’s own Boombox documentation says a drive holding custom sounds cannot be shared with Dashcam. On a 2025 Model Y the glovebox port already holds Tesla’s own Dashcam drive: unplug it for the show or the chime, then put it back. Dashcam and Sentry do not record while it is out.
  • Do not format the drive in the car. Controls > Safety > Format USB Drive formats to exFAT and then creates a TeslaCam folder — exactly the folder a light show drive is not allowed to have. If you have already done it, delete TeslaCam (and TeslaTrackMode if it appeared) afterwards.
  • Names are case sensitive. The folder is LightShow, capital L and capital S. The chime is LockChime.wav. A phone that renames a duplicate download to lightshow (1).fseq has quietly broken the show, so delete old copies before downloading new ones.

What goes on the drive. A light show is a folder named LightShow at the top level of the drive containing two files that share a basename: lightshow.fseq and lightshow.wav (or .mp3). A lock sound is a single file, LockChime.wav, under 1 MB — Tesla’s wording puts it on the drive itself; a folder named Boombox is reported by owners as also working and is not yet confirmed by me.

Platform

iPhone with a USB-C port

iPhone 15 and later, Safari on iOS 15 or newer. This is the easiest phone path: the drive plugs straight in and Files can even format it.

Light show

  1. Get the files into Files

    Download them in Safari and tap the downloads arrow at the top of the window; they land in Files > Downloads. If you downloaded a LightShow.zip, tap it there and Files unpacks it into a folder named LightShow beside it. Delete any older LightShow folder first — owners report the new one arriving as LightShow 2 otherwise, which is not a name the car looks for. I have not confirmed that behaviour myself yet.

  2. Plug the drive into the phone

    Straight into the USB-C port. It appears in Files > Browse under Locations. If nothing shows up, try a different drive: a few need more power than the phone will give.

  3. Move the folder onto the drive

    Touch and hold the LightShow folder, tap Move, choose the drive under Locations, tap Move. If the drive already has a LightShow folder, open it and move just the two files in instead of nesting a folder inside a folder.

  4. Check the names, then take it to the car

    On the drive you want LightShow/lightshow.fseq and LightShow/lightshow.wav, nothing else. Unplug it, put it in the glovebox USB-A port, wait a few seconds, then Toybox > Light Show > Schedule Show.

Lock sound

  1. Download and move it

    Tap the downloads arrow, touch and hold LockChime.wav, tap Move, choose the drive under Locations — the top level, not inside a folder — and tap Move.

  2. Plug it into the car

    Glovebox USB-A port, then Toybox > Boombox > Lock Sound and pick the entry for the drive. Owners report it appearing as USB; I have not confirmed the label. If nothing appears, try the Boombox folder placement instead and reinsert the drive.

If the car rejects the drive entirely, you can reformat on the phone: Files > Browse, touch and hold the drive, Erase, then choose ExFAT or MS-DOS (FAT). This erases everything on it.

Platform

iPhone with a Lightning port

iPhone 6s through 14. The steps are the same as above, with two differences that are worth knowing before you buy anything.

  • You need Apple’s Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter, the one with a second Lightning port for power — plug a charger into that port as well. The cheaper Lightning to USB Camera Adapter can answer with “this accessory uses too much power” when a flash drive is attached, and Apple’s own fix for that message is the USB 3 adapter with power passthrough. I have not tested how often a bus-powered stick works on the plain adapter, so the powered one is what I would buy. Apple does not list flash drives as supported on the plain adapter at all.
  • Files cannot format a drive on a Lightning iPhone. If the drive needs reformatting, do it on a computer or an Android phone. Formatting it in the car is the last resort, and if you do, delete the TeslaCam folder (and TeslaTrackMode if it is there) that the car creates.

Everything else — downloading in Safari, unpacking in Files, moving the folder or the wav onto the drive, checking the names, the glovebox port — is identical to the USB-C steps above.

Platform

Android

Chrome on Android 7 or newer, with a USB-C flash drive or a USB-A drive plus an OTG adapter. Not every phone can host a USB drive; if the drive is never detected at all, try a different cable or adapter before assuming the drive is dead.

Light show

  1. Download the two files separately

    Individual files, not a zip: lightshow.fseq and lightshow.wav land in Downloads. Delete any older copies first, because Chrome renames a duplicate to lightshow (1).fseq and the car needs the exact names. Google does not document an Extract action in Files by Google, so unpacking a zip on Android is an owner report rather than something I will point you at.

  2. Plug the drive in and allow access

    Tap the “USB available” notification and tap Allow. On Samsung phones, open My Files and look under USB storage instead.

  3. Make the folder and move both files into it

    Files by Google: Downloads, select both files, Move to, Storage devices, your drive, Add new folder named exactly LightShow, Move here. Samsung My Files: select both, Move, USB storage, Create folder LightShow, Move here.

  4. Check, eject, and take it to the car

    On the drive you want LightShow/lightshow.fseq and LightShow/lightshow.wav. Eject properly — Samsung My Files menu, Unmount, or the USB notification, Eject — then unplug. Glovebox USB-A port, wait, then Toybox > Light Show > Schedule Show.

Lock sound

  1. Download and move it

    LockChime.wav lands in Downloads. Files by Google: touch and hold it, Move to, Storage devices, your drive, Move here — the top level, not inside a folder. Check the name survived the move.

  2. Eject and plug it into the car

    Unmount, unplug, glovebox USB-A port, then Toybox > Boombox > Lock Sound.

If your phone offers to format the drive when you plug it in, the result is FAT32 for drives of 32 GB or less, which the car accepts.

Platform

A computer

The dull, reliable path. Nothing about it is Tesla-specific except the folder name.

  1. Download and unpack

    Download the zip and unpack it wherever your downloads go. You should end up with a folder named LightShow containing a .fseq file and an audio file with the same basename. For a lock sound there is nothing to unpack: just the one LockChime.wav.

  2. Copy it to the top level of the drive

    The LightShow folder goes at the root of the drive, not inside anything else. LockChime.wav goes at the root as a bare file.

  3. Format first if you need to

    Only if the car refuses the drive. On Windows, exFAT or FAT32. On a Mac, ExFAT or MS-DOS (FAT). Never NTFS: the car does not read it.

  4. Eject and go

    Eject the drive properly so the last writes are flushed, then the glovebox USB-A port.

If it did not work

The four things it is almost always

The popup says “Light Show” instead of “Custom Light Show”

That is the car telling you it found the menu but not a valid show, and it is documented behaviour. Work down the list: the folder is LightShow with that exact capitalisation, at the top level; the .fseq and the audio file share a basename; there is no top-level TeslaCam folder and no map or firmware files on the drive; the drive is exFAT or FAT32. Every Tesla example uses the basename lightshow in lower case, and one owner report has a differently named show greyed out where lightshow worked, so stick with lightshow until I have tested otherwise.

The car does not react to the drive at all

You are probably in a charge-only port. On many cars built after late 2021, and on every 2025 or later Model Y, the console USB-C ports supply power and nothing else. Use the USB-A port inside the glovebox. Give it a few seconds after inserting before opening Toybox.

The show plays but the music drifts out of time

Check the audio is 44.1 kHz. Tesla states plainly that less common 48 kHz files will not sync properly, and a 48 kHz file will otherwise look completely valid. This is the single most common cause of a show that starts right and ends wrong.

There is no Lock Sound entry under Boombox

Two possibilities. Either the car’s software is older than 2023.44.25, which you can check on the touchscreen, or the car has no Pedestrian Warning System speaker — Tesla states Boombox is only available on vehicles equipped with it, and that entertainment options vary by market, build date and configuration. If there is no Boombox app in Toybox at all, that is the answer.

These steps are paraphrased from Tesla’s owner documentation, release notes and light show repository; the sources are listed on the credits page. Details vary by model year, market and software version, so your own owner’s manual wins over anything here.