I don't know whether to ask it here or not.
Want to know that is there any way of hiding the apps and folder other then putting period(.) before file name or folder
I want to do it parametrically I just want to know the way or anyidea about it other then above one
I am working on app which is password protected and have to take care that hidden files once hidden that are even not visible to root users without that application.
So it here any way of doing this in external memory card.
Please provide me with solution or coding reference if you have.
Note that I am not asking for any android application that available in android market
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
dykhatri said:
I don't know whether to ask it here or not.
Want to know that is there any way of hiding the apps and folder other then putting period(.) before file name or folder
I want to do it parametrically I just want to know the way or anyidea about it other then above one
I am working on app which is password protected and have to take care that hidden files once hidden that are even not visible to root users without that application.
So it here any way of doing this in external memory card.
Please provide me with solution or coding reference if you have.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When we speak about media files:
an empty < no media > file, in a folder,
ussualy solves the problem of visibility, for other-media focused-on board apps,
I presume is not what you have in mind,
The ussual way-the apps are protecting their data-in windows for example,
is to create their own file format, like: .cpt, .dat, etc...
Files on an external sdcard are recognised by the strings to them,
and thus known to the index...
but when you remove those strings,
you ussualy destroy also the files structure
although he files themselves still do exist...
In my humble opinion, only the separate,encrypted partition on an sdcard,
along with internal file format, may provide
efficient level of security that you seek for your app...
There surely always will be an app, able to see hidden contents,
especially on removable media,
but to be able to see it- is one thing,
and the ability to read its contents- is a completely different story...
asgardr said:
When we speak about media files:
an empty < no media > file, in a folder,
ussualy solves the problem of visibility, for other-media focused-on board apps,
I presume is not what you have in mind,
The ussual way-the apps are protecting their data-in windows for example,
is to create their own file format, like: .cpt, .dat, etc...
Files on an external sdcard are recognised by the strings to them,
and thus known to the index...
but when you remove those strings,
you ussualy destroy also the files structure
although he files themselves still do exist...
In my humble opinion, only the separate,encrypted partition on an sdcard,
along with internal file format, may provide
efficient level of security that you seek for your app...
There surely always will be an app, able to see hidden contents,
especially on removable media,
but to be able to see it- is one thing,
and the ability to read its contents- is a completely different story...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What you have said makes seance to me sir but I forgot to mention here that I am only taking about android mobile OS specially. I am making application specially for android mobiles.I am not concern about another whether i can be display in PC or not that is not my concern.
can you have any idea for that
dykhatri said:
What you have said makes seance to me sir but I forgot to mention here that I am only taking about android mobile OS specially. I am making application specially for android mobiles.I am not concern about another whether i can be display in PC or not that is not my concern.
can you have any idea for that
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1.there is always a possibility that something hidden locally- on board of your device-
could be found through a computer connection,
so if you wanted app sensitive data to be secure, this aspect should also be taken into consideration...
2. windows is just an example:
some dependancies are similar throughout many other systems- just because they work as expected...
An internal file format and file encription is to be found in some of the android apps as well
Related
so I sync yesterday and notice 3 folders with characters not normally allowed. one contains all "?" while another has / and ?. when I try to delete, system can't since they contain these characters. and I can't find them using total command. any help?
You need to provide more infomation so we can help you .
Which version are you using (WM 6, 6.5, 6.5.3 etc.)? Where are the folders located? Do they contain files?
Sorry. Runninng WM6.5 stock verizon ROM with TF3D 2.0 on my Imagio. And they don't contain any files. I can open, but when I go to delete, it says files cannot contain the following symbols blah blah blah. And I can't seem to find them using TC.
anyone got anything?
Hi Jerry,
JerryA said:
anyone got anything?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are the folders on the SD card ? My suggestions below:
1) If they are, try deleting them from the Windows PC side via an ActiveSync connection or in "Disk drive mode".
2) Try renaming the folders with 'proper characters' and then delete.
3) If in "disk drive mode", try removing them via DOS command. You may want to do a "dir /X" to see the 8.3 short file/folder name and remove them.
Regards.
________________________________
* Today is yesterday's tomorrow. Today is also tomorrow's yesterday.
Then is the present the past's future or the present is the future's past. *
Hi Jerry,
JerryA said:
anyone got anything?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are the folders on the SD card ? My suggestions below:
1) If they are, try deleting them from the Windows PC side via an ActiveSync connection or in "Disk drive mode".
2) Try renaming the folders with 'proper characters' and then delete.
3) If in "disk drive mode", try removing them via DOS command. You may want to do a "dir /X" to see the 8.3 short file/folder name and remove them.
Regards.
________________________________
* Today is yesterday's tomorrow. Today is also tomorrow's yesterday.
Then is the present the past's future or the present is the future's past. *
No, they aren't on the SD card, they are phone memory. Whenever I try to rename them, I get the same error code, telling me files cannot contain the following..... And as for the last, I don't know anything about DOS, so that would require a level of expertise that I just don't have. I haven't seen any strange behaviour on the phone, and my memory size and usage has not freaked out, nor has my battery life. So what they are or what they are for is beyond me.
The 3 files are names thus:
??????
????Documents
oc????
Very odd.
JerryA said:
No, they aren't on the SD card, they are phone memory. Whenever I try to rename them, I get the same error code, telling me files cannot contain the following..... And as for the last, I don't know anything about DOS, so that would require a level of expertise that I just don't have. I haven't seen any strange behaviour on the phone, and my memory size and usage has not freaked out, nor has my battery life. So what they are or what they are for is beyond me.
The 3 files are names thus:
??????
????Documents
oc????
Very odd.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Jerry,
My suggestions are only if the files reside on the SD card.
I believe the ? means the available fonts, on your phone, does not have the correct character set to display it properly.
Base on my belief above, try the following:
a) My apology being a new member, I am not allowed to post clickable link. Go to this link : add a http:// in front first
forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5869460
b) Download and install the "Droid Sans Font.cab" to your phone in post #9. Alternatively, search for the file, arialuni.ttf, (Arial Unicode MS) first on your Windows PC if not then on the web and copy it to your phone, \Windows\Fonts directly. This is a 22Mb file !
c) Restart your phone and see if those files are showing proper characters.
d) If it does, then go ahead, open it and see what's the content like. Rename the file then delete. Uninstall the "Droid Sans Font.cab" if you wish. Personally, I don't like the font as the characters are rasterised.
Regards.
ugh, too much work. My phone isn't acting up, and even though I don't like uninvited strangers, they aren't eating up resources, and my phone is still functioning properly. I will keep these files you suggested handy in case something does start acting up, and see what happens.
yea, I am lazy when it comes to electronic stuff. Thanks for the info!
If you have SK Tools (or a similar app), try scanning the memory. It sounds like you have corrupted files or a corrupted directory. It may not be causing issues now, but it could cause issues sooner rather than later. You may also think about backing up everything now while you can.
JerryA said:
No, they aren't on the SD card, they are phone memory. Whenever I try to rename them, I get the same error code, telling me files cannot contain the following..... And as for the last, I don't know anything about DOS, so that would require a level of expertise that I just don't have. I haven't seen any strange behaviour on the phone, and my memory size and usage has not freaked out, nor has my battery life. So what they are or what they are for is beyond me.
The 3 files are names thus:
??????
????Documents
oc????
Very odd.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
oh no i have the same problem. but the strange files are on my storage card. i am backing up my storage card them i am going to format.
Hey All,
I know this topic has been dabbled in across a few threads, but I think it's worth making a dedicated sticky...
The 'accepted' way to hide media files in Android is to either make the hidden by adding a period to the front of the file name (eg: rename file.ext to .file.ext) or to add a blank file named .nomedia at the root of the folder containing the files you don't want picked up by the media scanner.
Works great in theory, but there are some existing bugs in Android (not sure if they're fixed in any release yet), that causes the media scanner to physically delete these files...!!
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3692
I understand this only happens when the media scanner initiates another scan, which will happen when you power cycle your device, or unmount and remount your storage. So while you might be safe for now, watch out when you run out of battery and wonder where everything's gone...!
I don't know full details, but I suspect it might do the same for any other instructional files, like: .noimage and anything else like that...
There are some theories on how to make it work properly - like creating an empty folder first, containing the .nomedia file, then adding the media - I understand this issue is only due to the media scanner deleting records from already its database - so if it doesn't know about them first, it shouldn't be an issue... Although I'm not 100% on that - so I'd be careful.
Is this still a problem?
not for me so far, and I always turn my tab off whenever I charge (it's better for the battery)
[email protected] said:
Is this still a problem?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes it is. I have brilliant corners 1.3.1 and by god I've tried every thing I could to get it to stop deleting media from me sd2 card, to no avail. If anyone hows why it still deletes after I;'ve installed nomedia in the sd2 card's root directory please advise.
I have noticed that android apps are horrible with file management. When you install an app on the phone it installs a whole new file hierarchy.
Example... when you install Meme Generator it creates a memegenerator folder within that folder it caches Favorites, Instances, Generators, and shares
when you delete the app it doesn't remove this folder or any of its contents
My idea is an app that would scan folders and mark if the folder is useless or not. Especially the unknown data folders that say something like com.fatsecret.android and have nothing but random .dat files or a .nomedia folder/file. Almost like a registry checker for a PC.
Another idea is to have an app that scans the SD card and locates all media. It would tell you how many of what type of file you have on your phone, and allow you to mass move to selected folders (Not copy or transfer but actually move th file to its new location)
im no programer but these would be great apps if they were to be developed
It would be really great man, unfortunately, I'm not able to develop things like this, but let me know about if it's ready.
Sent from my Boston using XDA App Slovakia
Lmfao i neglected to mention I am only beginning to learn the android programming. So im in no position to even comprehend programming this ... but im researching the possibility.
Smells like WINNING from my T-959 xda premium app
File management is very messy at the moment. Something needs to give!
I agree, I've been looking for a decent file manager, but haven't found anything yet!
theblacknight said:
I agree, I've been looking for a decent file manager, but haven't found anything yet!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are quite a few but 'Astro' seems to be the most popular. Give it a try!
I use Astro and i'm quite happy with it.
The question would be how to determine useless folders.
Dark3n said:
The question would be how to determine useless folders.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My initial idea was to use a system similar to a windows registry. Once the app starts for the first time it will create a database that stores folder data, which then it tries to match to an app that installed it. If the folder shows that the app that created it has been deleted it shows a red folder or has a negative mark next to it, if its still installed it shows a positive or green folder. This way you can get rid of the bad folders.
My second idea was to have an app create a drop folder for certain file types. For instance a folder like MY DOCUMENTS that has the folders MUSIC, PICTURES, AND VIDEOS. When the app starts it has you select a folder to drop a specific file type (example .MP3 files into MY DOCUMENTS/MUSIC). The all then media scans the phone and locate all matching file types and MOVES the file not COPYS.
Smells like WINNING from my T-959 xda premium app
Something kinda similar to what you want was introduced in FroYo. It gives each app a directory (on the SD card I don't know about onboard memory) that is automatically deleted by the system when the app is installed. Currently it has a few fairly big bugs but hopefully they will get fixed and developers will start to use it.
coreyja said:
Something kinda similar to what you want was introduced in FroYo. It gives each app a directory (on the SD card I don't know about onboard memory) that is automatically deleted by the system when the app is installed. Currently it has a few fairly big bugs but hopefully they will get fixed and developers will start to use it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That sounds liie it will be excellent once its implemented. I'm sure as most new things take time to catch on this will probably take a little while for it to happen. Maybe Google is going to make it mandatory for devs to do this.
Smells like WINNING from my T-959 xda premium app
It wouldn't necessarily have to be an app but some process that would make create or add to (create a sub-directory) default folders. I'm not saying it has to be a window like system but as simple as it gets Music, Images, Documents, Downloads maybe a spare folder for necessary background files (Hidden) But accessible when needed. The biggest problem here is that I don't think too many people that want this solution are programmers. because if you know how to program then you spend all day sorting throu this stuff anyway.
Well i'm on 2.2.1 and the system still keeps the settings folders in /dbdata/databases/*packagename* after you uninstalled it.
I usually resort to deleting the folders in adb shell when programming and testing apps.
So it seems there is need for this and there is no such tool yet?
I might start on it then, do you think there is enough intrest in something like that?
Help me with the most difficult and important step, invent a name for such an app !
Sounds like a useful tool. Great idea.
I'm constantly searching through my sd card and trying to figure out what can be deleted.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
mobbeel said:
I use Astro and i'm quite happy with it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried file expert? So much functionality for free.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Dark3n said:
Well i'm on 2.2.1 and the system still keeps the settings folders in /dbdata/databases/*packagename* after you uninstalled it.
I usually resort to deleting the folders in adb shell when programming and testing apps.
So it seems there is need for this and there is no such tool yet?
I might start on it then, do you think there is enough intrest in something like that?
Help me with the most difficult and important step, invent a name for such an app !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Name ideas
-sd looter
-Datei Objekts (file objects in German)
-file euphoria
-Zen management
-SD filed or SDefiled
Just a few to spark interest.
Smells like WINNING from my T-959 xda premium app
Allright, here we go:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1013063
First version is out, please help me test it.
This needs to be created. I'm just sorry I can't do any of the programming.
Just Incredible
I was flicking through Root Browser on my SD Card today and I noticed some things that I have no idea what they are. In the past, I deleted them and it messed with my gallery or with other kinds of stuff.
The specific names of the folders are as follows:
burstlyImageCache
LazyList
LOST.DIR
Mikulu
myrecord
.wiyun
.udstate
.config_c38
What are these? what happens if I delete them? I'm not overly concerned, I'm just curious.
Chrisruns said:
I was flicking through Root Browser on my SD Card today and I noticed some things that I have no idea what they are. In the past, I deleted them and it messed with my gallery or with other kinds of stuff.
The specific names of the folders are as follows:
burstlyImageCache
LazyList
LOST.DIR
Mikulu
myrecord
.wiyun
.udstate
.config_c38
What are these? what happens if I delete them? I'm not overly concerned, I'm just curious.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
generally if you do not know what something is, don't delete it. I think the image cache thing has to do with the camera, and anything with a dot in front of it is a system file, so leave those alone.
Delete it if its unuseful!
generally if you do not know what something is, don't delete it. I think the image cache thing has to do with the camera, and anything with a dot in front of it is a system file, so leave those alone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't agree!!!
Apps often let unused files in various folders, saturating the memory of the SD Card.
If u don't know what its for, ask (or ask google )
For exemple, wiyun is a chinese game editor. Hence .wiyun is its trash directory. If you don't have any games left from this editor, you can safely delete the folder.
Mikulu folder is probably from Mikulu music player ...
etc.
Directories myrecord & myalbum
Directories myrecord & myalbum are created by the
"Easy Downloader" app and by the "Pro" variant also.
Creating empty files with equal names prevents directory
creation. But uninstalling is the only way to avoid this completely.
Best regards
P.S. I assume that other "Easy ..." apps by the 2Easy Team
developer will create them because of the in app promotion
content.
Hi all,
I have a quite special issue. I hope someone here can help me or point me into the right direction.
Huawei P9 with Android 6.0, rooted.
For my purposes (*) I use a MicroSD card with 128MB capacity that contains a lot of small files (abt. 1.5 million files).
I wondered for weeks, why the phone becomes incredibly slow and hangs from time to time.
I learned that the Media Storage service could be responsible, because it tries to index all files and that can take a very long time if there are lots of files.
I deactivated Media Storage (using Titanium Backup) and BINGO! My phone is like new. Snappy, well usable.
Since I don't need MTP access to the phone, I thought it might be good now.
HOWEVER:
I just found out that ring tones don't work anymore, neither for phone ringing, nor for the alarm clock etc.
It seems that those apps also rely on the file index, that's gone now.
Without any ring or alarm tone, the phone is almost unusable again.
Do you know of any way to make the MTP / Mediastorage server ignore one directory when indexing? That would help, as I could simply let it ignore the directory on SD card that contains those 1.5 million files.
Or can you think of any other good solution for my problem?
Thank you so much!
Daniel
(*) to explain my usecase, why I need so many files on SD: I am a photographer, doing gigapixel panorama photography. For presenting my work to customers, I put my demo panoramic tours onto the SD card. These are HTML files with a data directory containing JPG tiles of the gigapixel panoramas. One panorama image consist of up to a few 100.000 files. A webserver running on the phone makes the panorama tours accessible to onboard browsers or, via WiFi hotspot, to other devices in the surrounding, e.g. a PC or tablet of the customer.
I considered solutions like an external storage (USB OTG) connected to the phone only when I present that stuff to the customer, or an entirely separate device (Pandora / Dragonbox Pyra or so) to host and serve the panorama tours, but I like to carry only one device, the small smart phone, to do it all. An extenal OSB OTG storage solution would almost fit my needs. But.. only almost, because a small storage is something that can get lost or stolen easily and that needs additional handling and provides additional points of failure, which I don't want to have in front of the customer.
Android is capable of doing it all, and my philosophy is, that a computer needs to adapt to my way of work than vice versa. This was the intention when Neumann and Zuse invented programmable computers. And I don't really want to eat humble pie here.
daniel908 said:
Hi all,
I have a quite special issue. I hope someone here can help me or point me into the right direction.
Huawei P9 with Android 6.0, rooted.
For my purposes (*) I use a MicroSD card with 128MB capacity that contains a lot of small files (abt. 1.5 million files).
I wondered for weeks, why the phone becomes incredibly slow and hangs from time to time.
I learned that the Media Storage service could be responsible, because it tries to index all files and that can take a very long time if there are lots of files.
I deactivated Media Storage (using Titanium Backup) and BINGO! My phone is like new. Snappy, well usable.
Since I don't need MTP access to the phone, I thought it might be good now.
HOWEVER:
I just found out that ring tones don't work anymore, neither for phone ringing, nor for the alarm clock etc.
It seems that those apps also rely on the file index, that's gone now.
Without any ring or alarm tone, the phone is almost unusable again.
Do you know of any way to make the MTP / Mediastorage server ignore one directory when indexing? That would help, as I could simply let it ignore the directory on SD card that contains those 1.5 million files.
Or can you think of any other good solution for my problem?
Thank you so much!
Daniel
(*) to explain my usecase, why I need so many files on SD: I am a photographer, doing gigapixel panorama photography. For presenting my work to customers, I put my demo panoramic tours onto the SD card. These are HTML files with a data directory containing JPG tiles of the gigapixel panoramas. One panorama image consist of up to a few 100.000 files. A webserver running on the phone makes the panorama tours accessible to onboard browsers or, via WiFi hotspot, to other devices in the surrounding, e.g. a PC or tablet of the customer.
I considered solutions like an external storage (USB OTG) connected to the phone only when I present that stuff to the customer, or an entirely separate device (Pandora / Dragonbox Pyra or so) to host and serve the panorama tours, but I like to carry only one device, the small smart phone, to do it all. An extenal OSB OTG storage solution would almost fit my needs. But.. only almost, because a small storage is something that can get lost or stolen easily and that needs additional handling and provides additional points of failure, which I don't want to have in front of the customer.
Android is capable of doing it all, and my philosophy is, that a computer needs to adapt to my way of work than vice versa. This was the intention when Neumann and Zuse invented programmable computers. And I don't really want to eat humble pie here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's an Xposed module that can do exactly what you're asking. But I'm not sure how nicely the xposed framework will work with your Huawei device (assuming you're still stock). You can check it out if you feel its worth any hassle that might be involved. Here's the link to the forum and a screenshot of the app's description & capabilities
https://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/xposed-xposed-media-scanner-optimizer-t2942609
GREAT! THANKS!
I didn't know that an XPosed module existed that could solve that problem.
An attempt to install XPosed a few months ago has failed.
But I retried today with the Wanam build (official one failed back then) and it worked well. Downloaded this module now and will see how it works.
Thank you so much!
Quick question:
The manual for the Media Scanner Optimizer module says
"Directories: If checked the media scanner will only scan directories that have a .scanMedia file (i.e. an empty file with a dot as first part of the name similar to the .noMedia file). Use a file explorer app to create this file. This file can be placed in a directory that may contain subdirectories. The subdirectories will be scanned as well. If unchecked all directories will be scanned (except for the ones containing a .noMedia file - this default behavior of the media scanner is not altered by the Xposed Media Scanner Optimizer)."
(source: http://repo.xposed.info/module/com.thomashofmann.xposed.mediascanneroptimizer)
Does that mean, in my case I coud simply have placed a .noMedia file in the directory with the millions of files and my problem would have been solved, even without XPosed?
Somewhere I read that the media storage service does NOT care about the .noMedia files, so I refused experimenting with this quite early in my research phase.
Do you have experiences, if this really works or not?
daniel908 said:
Quick question:
The manual for the Media Scanner Optimizer module says
"Directories: If checked the media scanner will only scan directories that have a .scanMedia file (i.e. an empty file with a dot as first part of the name similar to the .noMedia file). Use a file explorer app to create this file. This file can be placed in a directory that may contain subdirectories. The subdirectories will be scanned as well. If unchecked all directories will be scanned (except for the ones containing a .noMedia file - this default behavior of the media scanner is not altered by the Xposed Media Scanner Optimizer)."
(source: http://repo.xposed.info/module/com.thomashofmann.xposed.mediascanneroptimizer)
Does that mean, in my case I coud simply have placed a .noMedia file in the directory with the millions of files and my problem would have been solved, even without XPosed?
Somewhere I read that the media storage service does NOT care about the .noMedia files, so I refused experimenting with this quite early in my research phase.
Do you have experiences, if this really works or not?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I initially thought about the .nomedia alternative. But I wasn't clear on if the 1.5 million files you have were actually media files. If they are then creating a .nomedia file should do the trick. If not, then you have the Xposed module
I personally have a few .nomedia files here and there on my SD card. And it does what its supposed to, ie; stops any media file that's present in those folders from showing up in the Gallery/music player.
So I guess its safe to assume that they weren't indexed either
Freewander10 said:
I initially thought about the .nomedia alternative. But I wasn't clear on if the 1.5 million files you have were actually media files. If they are then creating a .nomedia file should do the trick. If not, then you have the Xposed module
I personally have a few .nomedia files here and there on my SD card. And it does what its supposed to, ie; stops any media file that's present in those folders from showing up in the Gallery/music player.
So I guess its safe to assume that they weren't indexed either
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought the .nomedia trick would only work, if the Xposed module was there?
Or does it work by default, even on a non-rooted stock ROM?
Thise mana files that I have are almost all JPG files. There are a few .js and .xml files, too, that control how the .jpgs are rendered on the client's browser, also some video files that are embedded into the virtual tours, but about 99.5% of the files are .jpg.
daniel908 said:
I thought the .nomedia trick would only work, if the Xposed module was there?
Or does it work by default, even on a non-rooted stock ROM?
Thise mana files that I have are almost all JPG files. There are a few .js and .xml files, too, that control how the .jpgs are rendered on the client's browser, also some video files that are embedded into the virtual tours, but about 99.5% of the files are .jpg.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It doesn't matter what type of files you have. If the folder has a .nomedia file, it will not be scanned for anything.
This is standard android behavior, and does not require xposed to be installed.