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[Q] Can't Find Media/Picture Files After Root

I have been at this for days. Googling for an answer, reading all the forums, and trying some of thier remedies to no avail. I rooted my T-mobile Galaxy S without any issues, however,now I can't access my stored wallpaper, notification or ringtones or pictures stored previously to root. I can see everything in thier respective folders when I open ES File Explorer. I tried to set up a separate media folder with sub folders(RINGTONES/NOTIFICATIONS) and copying and pasting the files to no avail. I have been resorting to reloading new ringtones/notificastions on Zedge and emailing the wallpapers and my photos to myself to get them to be recognized. When I open gallery there are no pictures, even though I see all my pictures in the picture file on sd card. I currently have ROM Manager, ROM Toolbox, Tegrack Overclock and Titanium Backup. Any help in directing me to fix this probably simple issue will be more than greatly appreciated. Also all my music shows up on my Poweramp App, but when changing a ringtone, and prompted for music file no music shows up. Thanks again. VN

vnicastro said:
I have been at this for days. Googling for an answer, reading all the forums, and trying some of thier remedies to no avail. I rooted my T-mobile Galaxy S without any issues, however,now I can't access my stored wallpaper, notification or ringtones or pictures stored previously to root. I can see everything in thier respective folders when I open ES File Explorer. I tried to set up a separate media folder with sub folders(RINGTONES/NOTIFICATIONS) and copying and pasting the files to no avail. I have been resorting to reloading new ringtones/notificastions on Zedge and emailing the wallpapers and my photos to myself to get them to be recognized. When I open gallery there are no pictures, even though I see all my pictures in the picture file on sd card. I currently have ROM Manager, ROM Toolbox, Tegrack Overclock and Titanium Backup. Any help in directing me to fix this probably simple issue will be more than greatly appreciated. Also all my music shows up on my Poweramp App, but when changing a ringtone, and prompted for music file no music shows up. Thanks again. VN
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not familiar with the Galaxy S but it sounds like a permissions issue. I know on the Galaxy S 4G the user.group on files/folders on the sdcard are set to system.sdcard_rw & the file permissions are usually rwxrwxr-x.
Check the permissions and user.group ownership to see if they look correct.

When you start the phone, or remount the SD card are you getting the Media Scanner notification? Your phone may not be checking your SD card for media. If you're using poweramp, check the settings for library to make sure it's not disabling the built-in media scanner for the folders you have your files in.
You can also try going to Phone Settings - Applications - Manage - All - Media Storage, then clear the data, and reboot.

You can also try making a backup of your sd card onto your computer, then formatting it to fat32 and putting the files back to see if it'll read them again. I've had issues before where the phone wouldn't recognize it unless it was fat32.

[FIX] "Unable To Play This Type Of Audio File"

Hi there! This will be my first thread at XDA.
I've just upgraded my HTC Sensation from stock to InsertCoin 6.0.0, and also installed the Beats Audio media player.
While I removed my SD card, inserted it into my PC, and copied 274 mp3 tracks to it, the standard music player couldn't play any of the songs. Also, the Photo Gallery wasn't able to find new pictures anymore.
People told me that my SD card was bad, which I found a little bit strange. The app "File Manager" was flawlessly able to find all of the pictures, and also the music, which actually could be played by the HTC music player by the app itself. I think this is caused by a bug or something, so I found out the fix myself:
1. Download a file browser app like "File manager" or "ES File Explorer"
2. Delete the folder /sdcard/music (or format the SD card, but make sure to backup the content you wish to keep!)
3. Create a new folder called "Music" at the root of your SD card
4. Get the app "Wifi File Explorer" from Google Play
5. Activate the WiFi (All Apps > Settings > Wireless & Networks > WiFi for older phones)
6. Open the browser and insert the URL shown by the app
7. Upload a file, open the music app, and see if it plays. If it works: zip all the songs, send them to the phone, and unzip them by clicking "unzip" next to the folder in the browser.
If it doesn't, I'm afraid you'll have to format your SD card. (All apps > Settings > Storage > Unmount SD card, and then Delete (Format) SD card)
Hope it'll help someone out there! Cheers
Edit: To avoid that this will happen again, connect your phone to the PC using a USB cable by the next time.
Edit #2: USB file transfer results exactly the same. I strongly recommend using Wifi File Explorer (or similar) to transfer desired data files between the PC and smartphone.

Playing music issues
Helou.
My GF reached your post looking for a solution to the same problem you had. Then she contacted me. In case you are still having this problem, is rather simply caused by a lack of trigger of the media scan. Every time you copy a media file to your phone's memory, it should trigger this action, but sometimes it doesnt happens (dont ask me why, it should). In fact, the solution you give is that the Wifi Explorer app correctly triggers the media scan. You can save precious minutes by just installing this app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.addz.mediascanner
And run it every time you copy/move files around from your pc to your phone.
If it helped, then update your thread with the solution, you never know when someone is looking for the same problem (then again, is one month old, maybe you're no longer here)

It worked for me.
I know this is an old thread and I didn't see where anyone noted that the solution worked. I have an HTC Incredible that was flaking out on me. The issue stated in this thread came up when I was reloading my music onto my SD card. I came across this forum and looked up the app recommended and it solved the problem. I am thankful for people out there who know what they are doing.

A temporary .nomedia file permanently hid everything

Hey everyone,
I was reorganizing my pictures on the sdcard when I began testing CM's new Gallery app (GalleryNext). At that time, I decided I wanted to reorganize my files. I used ES file explorer to search for a .nomedia file and copied the first result to the root of the sdcard while I looked a permanent place to put it after deleting and moving pictures. Looking back at the gallery, I noticed suddenly that all pictures disappeared from my gallery, which I expected.
However, after I moved the .nomedia file AND rebooted (several times), I've noticed my gallery is STILL empty. I also noticed PlayerPro doesn't see any music. My alarm app (Gentle Alarm) however still plays music to wake me up and the MediaMonkey app can see the music. What is going on? ES is set to show hidden files, the .nomedia files are where they need to be. I first cleared data on both Google and CM galleries (which didn't work), then I uninstalled Gallery Next (didn't work), and I tried SD Scanner which is an app that can trigger media scan on KK (I know the old methods don't work on KK). I also reflashed my ROM. After reflashing, I got ONE photo from my gallery to appear.
"What to do?"

rockingondrums said:
Hey everyone,
I was reorganizing my pictures on the sdcard when I began testing CM's new Gallery app (GalleryNext). At that time, I decided I wanted to reorganize my files. I used ES file explorer to search for a .nomedia file and copied the first result to the root of the sdcard while I looked a permanent place to put it after deleting and moving pictures. Looking back at the gallery, I noticed suddenly that all pictures disappeared from my gallery, which I expected.
However, after I moved the .nomedia file AND rebooted (several times), I've noticed my gallery is STILL empty. I also noticed PlayerPro doesn't see any music. My alarm app (Gentle Alarm) however still plays music to wake me up and the MediaMonkey app can see the music. What is going on? ES is set to show hidden files, the .nomedia files are where they need to be. I first cleared data on both Google and CM galleries (which didn't work), then I uninstalled Gallery Next (didn't work), and I tried SD Scanner which is an app that can trigger media scan on KK (I know the old methods don't work on KK). I also reflashed my ROM. After reflashing, I got ONE photo from my gallery to appear.
"What to do?"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also got this problem. My solution is transfer all files to computer, then format sd card. BUT all data will gone if you not backup first.such as RR3 data.

lala458 said:
I also got this problem. My solution is transfer all files to computer, then format sd card. BUT all data will gone if you not backup first.such as RR3 data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I just ended up copying everything elsewhere and reflashing the factory image, then re-doing everything. Although, it would have been nice not to. Just part of the gamble when using nightlies I guess.

I had the same problem few days ago.
I deleted appdata from settings, apps, all apps, gallery, then rebooted and used this app to fix it:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=burrows.apps.sdcard
Sent from my Nexus 5 using xda app-developers app

[Q] Where does Amazon Music store downloaded Prime music?

So Amazon Music now allows Prime members to download free Prime music to their mobile device for offline listening. Anyone know where on the device they store this music? If they're putting it on my phone instead of its external SD card, I'm going to be much more conservative about how much Prime music I download. Obviously they have security measures to keep the Prime music from being freely accessed outside of the Amazon Music App (and thus possibly shared), but something has to be stored somewhere... I just want to know where, exactly.
Apologies if this is a stupid question.
Using a rooted Sprint Samsung Galaxy S5, stock ROM (for now)

ant-iphone said:
So Amazon Music now allows Prime members to download free Prime music to their mobile device for offline listening. Anyone know where on the device they store this music? If they're putting it on my phone instead of its external SD card, I'm going to be much more conservative about how much Prime music I download. Obviously they have security measures to keep the Prime music from being freely accessed outside of the Amazon Music App (and thus possibly shared), but something has to be stored somewhere... I just want to know where, exactly.
Apologies if this is a stupid question.
Using a rooted Sprint Samsung Galaxy S5, stock ROM (for now)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i would like to know this as well. I just downloaded an album to my phone and the amazon music app says there is data on my external sd card, but i dont see the files.
using root explorer
extSdCard/Android/data/com.amazon.mp3/files/Music has an updated date of 17 min ago when I started to download, but there are no files in there..
are they hidden somehow?
partially downloaded...size on sd card matches what the notification panel size that it has downloaded.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}

seriously?
no one?

DRM'd Amazon music downloads don't go on SD card ... maybe they can be symlinked?
dh4645 said:
seriously?
no one?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On my rooted KitKat Motorola Photon Q, here's a sample path:
/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.amazon.mp3/files/Music/Bruce_Springsteen/Born_In_The_U_S_A_/B00137GCGK_(disc_1)_11_-_Dancing_In_The_Dark.m4a
Some of these will play on my phone (all would play on it when I was running in an unrooted JB environment), but not consistently (the Amazon app crashes).
[ actually there's no SD card currently inserted into this phone ]
If I was able to play these consistently from main storage, then my next step would be to try creating symbolic links from main storage to the SD card for these. I would like to know whether this would work. I'll report back if I wind up with a workable test environment (e.g., if I find that these recordings will play with a rooted JB ROM)

Favorable resolution on my JB ROM
jae_63 said:
On my rooted KitKat Motorola Photon Q, here's a sample path:
/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.amazon.mp3/files/Music/Bruce_Springsteen/Born_In_The_U_S_A_/B00137GCGK_(disc_1)_11_-_Dancing_In_The_Dark.m4a
Some of these will play on my phone (all would play on it when I was running in an unrooted JB environment), but not consistently (the Amazon app crashes).
[ actually there's no SD card currently inserted into this phone ]
If I was able to play these consistently from main storage, then my next step would be to try creating symbolic links from main storage to the SD card for these. I would like to know whether this would work. I'll report back if I wind up with a workable test environment (e.g., if I find that these recordings will play with a rooted JB ROM)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was finally able to get this working, but I'm using a JB ROM, not a KitKat ROM. I don't think that the latter should be a show-stopper, if the Amazon Prime MP3s will play "normally" with your ROM, i.e., prior to the gymnastics which I describe in my link.
Hmm ... I can't post the link, but you can google for "jae_63 android forums amazon prime symlinks".
If someone else could post the Android Forums link, that would be helpful ... TIA.
I will answer questions either here on XDA, or on Android Forums.
---------- Post added at 05:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:03 PM ----------
Hmm ... some reports suggest that this problem can be resolved using FolderMount, which has a discussion thread here on XDA.
This would be a much simpler solution than what I've done ... I suggest trying that first. My interpretation of the FolderMount documentation suggests that it might be necessary to use the paid version of that app to access the required /data/media directory. My solution is free, but pretty hairy.
Please post back here (or on AndroidForums) if you attempt either FolderMount or my solution.

dh4645 said:
i would like to know this as well. I just downloaded an album to my phone and the amazon music app says there is data on my external sd card, but i dont see the files.
using root explorer
extSdCard/Android/data/com.amazon.mp3/files/Music has an updated date of 17 min ago when I started to download, but there are no files in there..
are they hidden somehow?
-------------------------------------------------
I've also looked around and I think Amazon hides those files in that amazonmp3 folder
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

For Amazon Prime music, look in
/data/media/0/Android/data/com.amazon.mp3/files/Music
(That is how it is on my JB phone. Your phone may be different.)
Sent from my XT897 using Tapatalk

HTC m8 location
so, found the locations easy enough on my htc m8
Downloaded tracks store to internal device path :
/storage/emulated/0/android/data/com.amazon.mp3/files/music > PrimePlaylist (for downloaded playlists)
oddly, when i first selected the download option the app said "choose storage" and i choose my SD card.
I have since found that it has stored the downloads in both the internal and external locations; I have no idea why, but here is the external path for the SD card:
/storage/ext_sd/android/data/com.amazon.mp3/files/music > primeplaylist (for downloaded playlists)

Using Cyanogenmod on a Fire phone
At first the Amazon prime music app refused to install on my rooted Fire Phone.
I just installed the APK and it worked fine.
Then was just playing around with this today. Found the downloaded MP3 files are in a hidden directory. com.amazon.mp3 was hidden. (nice try Amazon).
It was a matter of clicking "show hidden files" in linux and duh; there it was.
data/com.amazon.mp3/files/music etc, etc

Player
Any ideas how you can play or convert these .m4a files?

Dr. Righteous said:
At first the Amazon prime music app refused to install on my rooted Fire Phone.
I just installed the APK and it worked fine.
Then was just playing around with this today. Found the downloaded MP3 files are in a hidden directory. com.amazon.mp3 was hidden. (nice try Amazon).
It was a matter of clicking "show hidden files" in linux and duh; there it was.
data/com.amazon.mp3/files/music etc, etc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not tried; they are DRM laden files. I googled a it and found some pretty "iffy" utilities I didn't trust not to be full of spyware.

on the internal storage <android<data<com.amazon.mp3<files<music. If you are trying to store to sd card and your getting the stubborn 206 error external memory is full, go to your settings<find storage<sd card<unmount(wait 10 seconds)<mount. it should then save to sd card. no it will not let you copy and paste the music from your phone to your sd card. if it is prime music it will need to be re-downloaded.

So i see where a downloaded playlist is supposed to reside but what about a locally created one? I had my music saved to my SD and my SD got full. So i transferred all my SD card to a new larger SD card. Now when i go into prime music it shows my playlist name but with zero songs. How do i fix that? I did not know how to put my playlist back up to the cloud.

Sdcard/android/data/com.amazon.mp3/files/music/private. (assuming you've chosen to save to SD)
Samsung's own file mgr won't see/find it but ES file mgr does.

Hi All,
I would have the same question to ask you.
Is there a way to convert or playing these .m4a files through other media player?
ie. Google Play Music.
thanks in advance

I have the files and we cannot change them as they are DRM protected. I heard somewhere that we need to create an audio cd and then extract but that did not work either. Any help on this will be much appreciated!

Android 11 and .nomedia file

I was about to post a question about this, but I just figured this out myself. My phone recently updated to Android 11. I have an SD-Card which has music on it - along with a lot of album art. Since the update, all these album art photos have been cluttering up my gallery. Every time I add a .nomedia file in here (which also was there before the update), it seems to get automatically deleted (no, not hidden). I tried copying a .nomedia file from elsewhere on the phone. I even tried popping out the SD-Card and adding the file via PC. As soon as Android touches it, it deletes the file again.
So, here is the issue. With Android 11, it is creating some default folders (I wish it wouldn't clutter up things with these empty folders that I never need or use). Those default folders include: Music, Pictures, Movies. These are created at the top level on the SD-Card and on internal storage. So, if you are also using one of those folders for something, it's going to auto delete the .nomedia file. In my case, I just moved my music into a Musics folder instead(and ensured it has a .nomedia file, of course.
Hopefully this will save someone else from wasting their time trying to figure out why this is happening!

pacaveli420 said:
I was about to post a question about this, but I just figured this out myself. My phone recently updated to Android 11. I have an SD-Card which has music on it - along with a lot of album art. Since the update, all these album art photos have been cluttering up my gallery. Every time I add a .nomedia file in here (which also was there before the update), it seems to get automatically deleted (no, not hidden). I tried copying a .nomedia file from elsewhere on the phone. I even tried popping out the SD-Card and adding the file via PC. As soon as Android touches it, it deletes the file again.
So, here is the issue. With Android 11, it is creating some default folders (I wish it wouldn't clutter up things with these empty folders that I never need or use). Those default folders include: Music, Pictures, Movies. These are created at the top level on the SD-Card and on internal storage. So, if you are also using one of those folders for something, it's going to auto delete the .nomedia file. In my case, I just moved my music into a Musics folder instead(and ensured it has a .nomedia file, of course.
Hopefully this will save someone else from wasting their time trying to figure out why this is happening!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This makes no sense, please explain in more detail.

android1977 said:
This makes no sense, please explain in more detail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you're storing your music files in any of the default folders, Android is going to auto delete your .nomedia file if you try to put one there. Ergo, the solution is you need to store your music in a folder named something else.

pacaveli420 said:
If you're storing your music files in any of the default folders, Android is going to auto delete your .nomedia file if you try to put one there. Ergo, the solution is you need to store your music in a folder named something else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks that's what I did and got lucky, I was so desperate I signed up to XDA just to comment I gotta say XDA I love your site and been reading for a couple year's now, enjoy the information provided, thanks guy's for all your hard work

pacaveli420 said:
If you're storing your music files in any of the default folders, Android is going to auto delete your .nomedia file if you try to put one there. Ergo, the solution is you need to store your music in a folder named something else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for saving my media library! I've been tortured by this issue since using the new phone, finally!

hello, i just get Android 11 on my MI A3, and those folders ( music, pictures, movies )appears on my sd card, they are useless for me, is there a way to delete them?
before Android 11, i didn't have this problem because i choosed " use sd as external support " instead of "use sd as extended memory" when inserting the sd card, but now even if i make the same choice, the folders are there and i can't delete them.

Sort of off topic but not really:
How do I stop it from creating these default folders? It's extremely annoying. I don't have my SD card structured that way and never have. I've deleted the default music, movies, etc folders numerous times now as they just clutter up the root directory and they keep reappearing. Is there a solution to this?

This seems to be a part of Android 11s default folder structure which no one ever bothered to do something about. I wouldn't be surprised if it's there for "security reasons" as well as a communist one. As in you only have the option to use these "secure" folders or else it won't show up in your apps at all.
This might be a way for Google to slowly faze out SDCards entirely while only giving you the option to use said folders for your "private" stuff akin to how IOS (kinda) works. In other words, they are doing it on purpose and no one ever bothered to read the fine print.
Obviously private music and other media collections is the root (see what I did there) cause of the problem. They don't want you to have those at all, And want you to use streaming services instead (tinfoil hat). Which is probably what these folders will probably end up being used for.
Netflix and Spotify allow you to store music on your device, but it's encrypted and will probably end up there at some point in Androids lifecycle. Obviously these files don't need .nomedia since the files are encrypted and will only show up in said app either way which makes the above meaningless.
Most of this is speculation obviously, but we've slowly been moving towards this trend if you look at how System apps were split into app and priv-app and so on. At some point in time only certain apps that has had the blessing of Google will be allowed to read anything off your storage. This happened with Chrome not to long ago where they blocked side-loaded extensions from running.
You will slowly see Android turning into IOS because they (Google) and big-tech in general wants 100% control of what you can and can't do. And everything based on AOSP or LOS is gonna follow suit because no one gives a flying fudge because that's too bothersome. The fragmentation of custom builds based on LOS/AOSP in general already shows that this has always been the case for the last 10 years. Linux in general is no different either as can be seen with wokeism. Except that was through decimation via woke people and not big-tech.

I was going crazy thinking this issue was specific to my samsung's stock rom. I started searching about this once I noticed it on LOS 18. Glad I'm not alone
I tend to be a little OCD about my folder structures but at this point I don't mind making a separate folder to avoid album arts in my gallery.

I believe I found a solution to this. It's been about a week or two with no further incident now. My solution was to delete the default folders from the root of the SD card because I don't use them, then create blank files that used those names. Haven't had a problem since.
I use the top level pictures folder because of a compatibility issue with programs that have small file path character limits that cause the program to hang. I don't use them anymore but I haven't had a reason to move it back where I had it previously and that would only make the default folder issue worse if I did. Or at least it would have until now with this discovery.
I do not use the movies and music folders, and if I move my pictures folder back where I had it I won't use that one either. Having them pop up on their own to clutter my root directory on both my SD card and my phone itself was very annoying. After deleting the movies and music folders off of the root of my SD card for the billionth time and getting rid of the empty default folders on my phone again, I created two blank files on my SD card root called Music and Movies. Ever since then the default folders haven't reappeared. On top of that, it hasn't created any ".thumbnails" folders all over the place like it always used to do either. That includes doing so on the internal phone storage. Creating those files on the SD card seems to have broken the whole process. I imagine the same would work vice versa for OP since it sounds like they use those default folders. Find an empty default folder on internal storage, delete it, create a file and name it the name of the folder you deleted (case sensitive), and that should disable the annoying default folder management process too. I can't vouch for that method, but I can vouch for it working when you do so on the SD card.

I just noticed this today on my tab s7+.
From what I can tell, the .nomedia file nolonger does anything on its own. However, if I add the .nomedia file to a folder, then rename the folder placing a . in front, of course it hides the entire folder. When I rename the folder again, removing the ., the .nomedia file now works. No matter how many times I rename the folder, the gallery does not see it until I remove the .nomedia file.

pool_shark said:
I just noticed this today on my tab s7+.
From what I can tell, the .nomedia file nolonger does anything on its own. However, if I add the .nomedia file to a folder, then rename the folder placing a . in front, of course it hides the entire folder. When I rename the folder again, removing the ., the .nomedia file now works. No matter how many times I rename the folder, the gallery does not see it until I remove the .nomedia file.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank you pool shark.. i tried what you did/suggested and it worked. thanks.