[Q] Anyone understand the photos app algorithm? - Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

There are a dozen or so photos stored on my N5. Two of them never show up in the "Photos" app "All" tab (which is where photos always starts up). What the heck is the algorithm it is using to decide which photos to show in "All". I'm not connected to G+, I don't have the photos backed up on drive or G+, they are all of them only on the Nexus 5 local storage (in fact they are all in the same directory where the camera stored them when I took the pictures - none of them came from any source other than the native camera).
If I hit menu and pick "on device", it does show the two that are left out of "All" (which makes me wonder what on earth the word "All" means to google developers).
Can this be explained?

Yikes! It was more peculiar than I thought! I just saw a bunch of placeholder thumbnails in the all tab, which I thought was the normal background for free space, but after I scrolled down several screens, the two missing images were there after all, way the heck down under a slew of placeholders. When I finally tried to look at one of the placeholders, I got a "media not found error", so I just started deleting them, and eventually I finally got rid of all of them and the two missing images were now at the end of the list.
I have no idea what the heck they were. Apparently it thought there were a bunch of images that weren't there, but I have no idea how it got that idea .

Related

[Q] CM9 Dev Tools Fake Albums media provider [SOLVED]

So in CM9's dev tools under media provider there is a button called insert 20 albums. I innocently hit it trying to see what it did. As expected it made 20 fake albums on my device. However I can't find a way to remove these. Others have said that when they reboot they're gone, but mine stick around. I can't find any files with these names on my device. I also tried adding 20 new ones and rebooting to see if it was just a glitch and they would go away after that, so now I have 40 fake albums on my device. Does anyone know how to get rid of them?
I don't know how that feature works, but have you already tried clearing music app data?
yeah sorry I should have mentioned that. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the player even.
I don't mean to be rude, but I'mbumping this in hopes that someone smarter than me can find it
After posting I decided to try my luck again. I found the media provider databases internal.db and external.db in /data/data/com.android.providers.media/databases
after poking around in them I found reference to the fake albums in the external.db they seem to reference some bogey url instead of a file, so I just deleted the external.db and rebooted. It appears to have repopulated with normal settings afterwards.
Here the case is old, but as still same case here with me. By the way, Thanks for helping!

SugarSync - Duplicate Device problem

Not sure if this is the right forum for this post, but here goes...
I've been using SugarSync for a few months now to see if it works for me the way I need. Now, after flashing a couple ROMs (and reformatting my SD card) for experimentation, I find that the SS website is listing two instances of my Inspire, one has a folder structure and synchronized files, the other does not have anything listed at all.
Unfortunately their system does not delete devices, but merely moves them into a 'recycle' area, so that you can reinstate them later. That's not what I want to do at this point, I'd rather start over "from scratch" by completely purging the two devices and adding my phone.
The reason I want to purge and begin over again is that when I tried to 'restore' my device, I wound up with duplicate pictures, and they were placed in a different path in a folder that was not the original - IOW, instead of using the DCIM/100MEDIA folder, SS was placing the synchronized pictures in the 'My Sugarsync Folders' directory.
Anyway, I have made two attempts at email support and one post on their forum, but none of these attempts have received any response.
Wondering if any of you guys have had this happen to you, and what the solution might be.
Nobody else is experiencing this problem?

Deleted a whole album of photos by accident.

I thought I was deleting only one photo but deleted a whole album which was kind of frustrating. I was in album mode in the gallery and selected the album which only shows the first picture. That, and the fact that the confirmation dialog for both deleting an album and a single photo says "are you sure you want to delete this item?" make it confusing.
They should make it clearer that you are deleting a whole album by saying in the dialog "are you sure you want to delete this album of n pictures?" and making the album thumbnail look different than an individual picture.
I am not sure if this is an Alcatel thing or an Android thing but two small changes to the ui could prevent loss of important photos. They could also offer a recycle bin feature that you could turn on or off which would be nice.
Otherwise I love this phone. Truly an amazing device for $250.
Try another photo manager app. Made the same mistake myself. Luckily at the time I did it, I had the photos already copied to a PC and there wasn't many photos involved, maybe a dozen in the album. I no longer use the stock gallery. I now use Google Photos. There were a couple others I tried to use, but they wouldn't offer the capability to delete off the SD card, couldn't get privilege to delete.
If its that much of an annoyance. I always use 'quickpic', its the best gallery app for android IMO.
If you have a windows PC and the folder was on an external card, get the card connected somehow to the PC (not in the phone, but in an adapter so it can get a drive letter). Install the free version of Recuva and do a scan on the card. It should be able to recover most if not all files if nothing was written on top of them.

S7 Edge crashes caused by Google Photos Collage

I have been using my S7 Edge for about a year, and it has been updated to the latest firmware and apps.
The first crash of the S7 Edge happened more than a month ago. It happened when I was viewing my photos with Google Photos. It went completely dead. Even the boot loader had some error. So I had to have it flashed with a new firmware. A couple days ago, the same thing happened again. But this time I tried with some force starts and cache wipe-outs, it came back. But still it kept crashing when I use Google Photos or even Gallery to access my photos. I deleted the caches and the data of the two apps, but it still wouldn't eliminate the crashes.
What did I do before the crashes happened? The only thing major is that I copied all of my photos to my Mac, and removed the Camera folder thereafter, both with Android File Transfer program on the Mac.
But I had done the same before and had not had any problems. So what's been different during these couple of months? The only thing I did that I hadn't done before is that I had some collages created with Google Photos. These collage files resided in the Google Photos folder. Deleting Google Photos' data does not get them deleted. Of course another thing different is that the firmware got updated.
How to get rid of the crashes? I manually removed the Google Photos folder (that contained the collage files), and the phone becomes stable.
I don't know why it happens, but it appears the collage files are linked with the original photos that no longer exist, so memory becomes corrupted which then causes the system to crash.
I think this is more of a bug of Samsung's firmware. I hope this brings their attention to fix it.
The way to re-created the problem is as follows: (This is basically what happened in my cases, but I am not going to further test this on my phone. I hope someone with a spare phone or some QA engineer at Samsung could test this.)
1) Create some collages with Google Photos.
2) Remove the Camera folder with Android File Transfer. (I can't say whether removing the folder with My Files app would cause the same problem).
3) Start Google Photos or Gallery and review or edit some photos. Note that the crash does not happen immediately after removing the Camera folder. The odds of a crash may be larger, I guess, when the folder contained a lot of photos.

Question Samsung Photo Folders

Hello,
Recently upgraded to S22 Ultra from S22 and have nothing but issues.
Discovered that there were multiple "camera roll" "screenshoot" "dcim" etc.. folders at first I thought it was just folders from older phones but it wasn't. There were photos from 1 day spread throughout all the "camera roll" folders so I combined them. That somehow filled up my storage and has caused duplicates and caused issues with the apps that create their own folders.
So I can undo what I've done and hopefully fix the problem now and for future upgrades, could you please tell me where all the various photo folders should be saved? When I combined the duplicate folders I then moved them all under Samsung Gallery.
Hope that makes sense.
Most items are natively stored in the 'DCIM' folder (e.g., screenshots, or pictures/videos that you took ON the device).
However different applications often use their own folders in which to store media. Some 'may' provide you the option to remap the path to a folder of your choice.
However, if you want to see where a picture is stored by folder name, open 'Gallery' and go to 'Albums'.
AHE_XDA said:
Most items are natively stored in the 'DCIM' folder (e.g., screenshots, or pictures/videos that you took ON the device).
However different applications often use their own folders in which to store media. Some 'may' provide you the option to remap the path to a folder of your choice.
However, if you want to see where a picture is stored by folder name, open 'Gallery' and go to 'Albums'.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, the folders with similar names have been created by the device I'm not referring to any albums within Samsung Gallery I've created. The issue is with what this device is doing, I first located them in Samsung Files on the device and also in OneDrive via the website not the OneDrive app.
There are multiple dcim folders, multiple folders labelled camera, camera roll etc.. at first I thought they were folders from previous devices, but when you take say 20 photos in a day they are spread throughout these various camera roll folders not just in one.
Hi, I only see one DCIM folder in my S22 Ultra. Are you saying that you have multiple folders with the same name? How many of them? Are you using multiple photo applications, like the GCam ported application and the stock one, and others? Are you in stock android? Rooted?
kkvvdd said:
Hi, the folders with similar names have been created by the device I'm not referring to any albums within Samsung Gallery I've created. The issue is with what this device is doing, I first located them in Samsung Files on the device and also in OneDrive via the website not the OneDrive app.
There are multiple dcim folders, multiple folders labelled camera, camera roll etc.. at first I thought they were folders from previous devices, but when you take say 20 photos in a day they are spread throughout these various camera roll folders not just in one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is not normal behavior. The way the S22 Ultra handles images taken by both the default Camera and Expert RAW apps is the same as the S22+ and S22. It creates only one DCIM folder with Camera, Expert RAW, and Screenshot subfolders. Apps like Facebook, Video Editor, AR Emoji camera will also build their own subfolders within DCIM. Google Messages, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Office Lense, put their respective folders in the Pictures folder which is at the same level as DCIM.
Try resetting the camera app settings.
Camera - > Settings->Reset settings (3rd from the bottom).
If that doesn't work backup all of your important files (documents, photos, videos, etc.) to your computer and factory reset it. Don't restore from a backup. Once you have confirmed that it is working properly, you copy your files back. When reinstalling apps pay attention to the behavior after each installation. There is still the possibility of a third party app may be the cause.
Yes, I know that it's tedious, but it will either fix it, or help you identify what is causing the problem.
Marcelocohenarg said:
Hi, I only see one DCIM folder in my S22 Ultra. Are you saying that you have multiple folders with the same name? How many of them? Are you using multiple photo applications, like the GCam ported application and the stock one, and others? Are you in stock android? Rooted?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, yes so more than one Dcim, more than one camera roll etc.. at first I thought they were from my previous devices but when I take photos, one days worth of photos is spread across the say camera roll folders which just makes it more confusing to workout how to fix.
Nothing out of the ordinary, everything's stock standard that automatically is on the device. I've had nothing but trouble since upgrading so many other issues but would like to sort this one if I can.
gernerttl said:
That is not normal behavior. The way the S22 Ultra handles images taken by both the default Camera and Expert RAW apps is the same as the S22+ and S22. It creates only one DCIM folder with Camera, Expert RAW, and Screenshot subfolders. Apps like Facebook, Video Editor, AR Emoji camera will also build their own subfolders within DCIM. Google Messages, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Office Lense, put their respective folders in the Pictures folder which is at the same level as DCIM.
Try resetting the camera app settings.
Camera - > Settings->Reset settings (3rd from the bottom).
If that doesn't work backup all of your important files (documents, photos, videos, etc.) to your computer and factory reset it. Don't restore from a backup. Once you have confirmed that it is working properly, you copy your files back. When reinstalling apps pay attention to the behavior after each installation. There is still the possibility of a third party app may be the cause.
Yes, I know that it's tedious, but it will either fix it, or help you identify what is causing the problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, I've had to factory reset over 30 times as I have so many issues, not just this photo folder issue. When I first got the device and setting it up as per usual encountered errors.
Did a factory reset via the settings and when the phone was turned back on it wasn't completely reset, tried again and a few more things were reset but again not all.
Had to do a black screen reset (sorry dont know what thats called) and that helped a lot more but it was still not a completly reset device.
I've tried not signing into anything and setting up as a new user, didn't solve anything, I've signed in as you go and that hasn't worked either. I've installed all apps manually, not from backup, and still have issues (I only have like 20 apps most are just standard or the bank). I've had an authorised technician remove and reinstall the software, and that didn't solve anything. They were stumped as they can replicate all of my issues but weren't able to fix them.
I've been battling with this since I got it and have had to make do but it's basically an expensive piece of plastic/glass at this point.
I haven't tried specifically what you've suggested about the camera, so I will give that a go.
kkvvdd said:
Hi, I've had to factory reset over 30 times as I have so many issues, not just this photo folder issue. When I first got the device and setting it up as per usual encountered errors.
Did a factory reset via the settings and when the phone was turned back on it wasn't completely reset, tried again and a few more things were reset but again not all.
Had to do a black screen reset (sorry dont know what thats called) and that helped a lot more but it was still not a completly reset device.
I've tried not signing into anything and setting up as a new user, didn't solve anything, I've signed in as you go and that hasn't worked either. I've installed all apps manually, not from backup, and still have issues (I only have like 20 apps most are just standard or the bank). I've had an authorised technician remove and reinstall the software, and that didn't solve anything. They were stumped as they can replicate all of my issues but weren't able to fix them.
I've been battling with this since I got it and have had to make do but it's basically an expensive piece of plastic/glass at this point.
I haven't tried specifically what you've suggested about the camera, so I will give that a go.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If a factory reset is not working, it sounds like the recovery partition is corrupted. Have you attempted a factory reset using the power on, volume up method?
1. Completely power the phone off.
2. Simultaneously press and hold the power and volume up buttons until you see the Samsung logo. This will put you into Recovery mode.
3. Using the volume down button, scroll down to select Wipe data/factory reset and press the power button.
4. Select yes to confirm your choice.
It will may ask you for your Google account password. If it does, enter it. It should then run you through the reset process. The difference with using this method instead of doing from settings, is that it should download a fresh image.
Hi,
Apologies for the delay. I did a hard reset last night and still had so much trouble, there is definitely something off with this phone.
However it didn't reset the photo folders.
It currently looks like this Onedrive: Files: Pictures: Samsung Gallery: all folders created by the device, by apps, by me.
I had moved all folders into Samsung Gallery as I didn't understand why some folders where in "Pictures" and some were in "Samsung Gallery" as that's were the duplicate DCIM, Camera roll etc.. were.
Do you happen to know the correct file path for:
- folders created by the device
- folders created by apps that use Photos
- folders created by me
Then I will manually go into OneDrive on my Laptop and move them around, hopefully that will solve the problem.
Thank you,
kkvvdd said:
Hi,
Apologies for the delay. I did a hard reset last night and still had so much trouble, there is definitely something off with this phone.
However it didn't reset the photo folders.
It currently looks like this Onedrive: Files: Pictures: Samsung Gallery: all folders created by the device, by apps, by me.
I had moved all folders into Samsung Gallery as I didn't understand why some folders where in "Pictures" and some were in "Samsung Gallery" as that's were the duplicate DCIM, Camera roll etc.. were.
Do you happen to know the correct file path for:
- folders created by the device
- folders created by apps that use Photos
- folders created by me
Then I will manually go into OneDrive on my Laptop and move them around, hopefully that will solve the problem.
Thank you,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is absolutely nothing wrong with your phone.
Have you enabled Sync between OneDrive and Samsung Gallery?
If so, turn it OFF.
There is only one DCIM folder in a phone, and the Camera folder is inside of it. On Samsung phones, even the Screenshot folder is inside DCIM by default, but you have the choice of changing its location.
Hi, there is actually a lot wrong with the phone not just this. Which has all been proven by an authorised Samsung technician who has been able to replicate bit not fix any of the issues, unfortunately it's been like this since day one and I'm not getting very far with Samsung so I am trying to fix what I can so it's more usable than an expensive piece of plastic/glass.
But thank you for being so polite and helpful, it makes joining a forum and asking for help so much less daunting.
gernerttl said:
If a factory reset is not working, it sounds like the recovery partition is corrupted. Have you attempted a factory reset using the power on, volume up method?
1. Completely power the phone off.
2. Simultaneously press and hold the power and volume up buttons until you see the Samsung logo. This will put you into Recovery mode.
3. Using the volume down button, scroll down to select Wipe data/factory reset and press the power button.
4. Select yes to confirm your choice.
It will may ask you for your Google account password. If it does, enter it. It should then run you through the reset process. The difference with using this method instead of doing from settings, is that it should download a fresh image.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Apologies for the delay. I did a hard reset last night and still had so much trouble, there is definitely something off with this phone.
However it didn't reset the photo folders.
It currently looks like this Onedrive: Files: Pictures: Samsung Gallery: all folders created by the device, by apps, by me.
I had moved all folders into Samsung Gallery as I didn't understand why some folders where in "Pictures" and some were in "Samsung Gallery" as that's were the duplicate DCIM, Camera roll etc.. were.
Do you happen to know the correct file path for:
- folders created by the device
- folders created by apps that use Photos
- folders created by me
Then I will manually go into OneDrive on my Laptop and move them around, hopefully that will solve the problem.
Thank you,
kkvvdd said:
Hi,
Apologies for the delay. I did a hard reset last night and still had so much trouble, there is definitely something off with this phone.
However it didn't reset the photo folders.
It currently looks like this Onedrive: Files: Pictures: Samsung Gallery: all folders created by the device, by apps, by me.
I had moved all folders into Samsung Gallery as I didn't understand why some folders where in "Pictures" and some were in "Samsung Gallery" as that's were the duplicate DCIM, Camera roll etc.. were.
Do you happen to know the correct file path for:
- folders created by the device
- folders created by apps that use Photos
- folders created by me
Then I will manually go into OneDrive on my Laptop and move them around, hopefully that will solve the problem.
Thank you,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some apps do put folders in the Pictures folder.
Just to be clear. When you open My Files and go to the Internal storage, how many DCIM folders are there? There should only be one. If there is, then your phone is working as designed. You cannot have two folders with the same name on the same level. No OS that I know of does allows that.
If you are seeing more than one DCIM folder in OneDrive, then something happened with the syncing. Are you syncing any other devices (tablets or phones) with OneDrive?

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