Database Info

[Q] Download Files From Google Drive

Hi ,
I uploaded some pictures on my Gmail Drive yesterday via Laptop.
When I use the Android Google Drive Client on my Gingerbread , I have options of viewing it or making it offline.
Is there any way of downloading the pictures to my SD card ?
Making it offline doesn't help because once I remove the Google Drive App from my Droid , I will no longer be able to view that picture.
I want a permanent download so that my downloaded pictures appear in my gallery even after un-installation of Google Drive.

EDIT: [SOLVED]
Disable encryption via settings, and the files are accessible in the below folder. Thank the man
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Click to collapse
The files seem to be in the google docs application folder, which on my system is found in /mnt/sdcard/Android/Data/com.google.android.apps.docs/files/pinned_docs_Files_do_not_edit/*CRAZY FOLDER NUMBER*
However, viewing the files does not work. It seems that this is a feature they have not included (for whatever reason).
Dropbox lets you export files.
You could also try another service called "Box".

KeePassDroid with Google Drive
I was going to create a new thread but in searching found this one. I'll use this one as maybe it applies with certain features not yet being implemented? Or am I overlooking or doing something wrong? I'll keep this simple. I use KeePass V1.x and KeepassDroid to keep my passwords in sync. It works great with DropBox. I have my database stored in the cloud and whenever I make a revision, it syncs across all my devices. Being the Google Whore I am, I was excited to try it with Google Drive. NO GO!
I can access the file and open the database with KeePassDroid without any issues. If I make a change and try to save it I get the following error. /data/data.com.google.android.apps.docs/cache/filecache2/123456789/databasename.kdb.tmp: open failed: EACESS (permissions denied). It won't let me write back to the database like DropBox will.
When I made the file available off-line, it would let me save the file, but it would not save that file back to the cloud. Do you think it's a permission issue on my side, or a limitation right now with Google Drive? Quick side note: I'm using a ported version of ICS but not really having any other issues. But if others are able to write back with a 3rd party app, then maybe it is something to do with the port....just a thought? If anybody has any ideas....Thanks!

RikkKeith said:
I was going to create a new thread but in searching found this one. I'll use this one as maybe it applies with certain features not yet being implemented? Or am I overlooking or doing something wrong? I'll keep this simple. I use KeePass V1.x and KeepassDroid to keep my passwords in sync. It works great with DropBox. I have my database stored in the cloud and whenever I make a revision, it syncs across all my devices. Being the Google Whore I am, I was excited to try it with Google Drive. NO GO!
I can access the file and open the database with KeePassDroid without any issues. If I make a change and try to save it I get the following error. /data/data.com.google.android.apps.docs/cache/filecache2/123456789/databasename.kdb.tmp: open failed: EACESS (permissions denied). It won't let me write back to the database like DropBox will.
When I made the file available off-line, it would let me save the file, but it would not save that file back to the cloud. Do you think it's a permission issue on my side, or a limitation right now with Google Drive? Quick side note: I'm using a ported version of ICS but not really having any other issues. But if others are able to write back with a 3rd party app, then maybe it is something to do with the port....just a thought? If anybody has any ideas....Thanks!
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Click to collapse
It *seems* to me like a limitation with their software. The fact that you can't even use the files outside of google drive/docs despite them being there indicates that either the files are encrypted, or in some other non-standard format. Uploading probably doesn't work because the file you put there are in the wrong format for the software to use them.

I switched back to Dropbox (which I never REALLY left) because of this. As a way to move files to your phone (like .zips to flash), Google drive falls short.

BK553 said:
I switched back to Dropbox (which I never REALLY left) because of this. As a way to move files to your phone (like .zips to flash), Google drive falls short.
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Click to collapse
Send them clear, direct feedback. Maybe they'll change it. After all, the product was just launched

Same here. I suspect G will change over time .
BK553 said:
I switched back to Dropbox (which I never REALLY left) because of this. As a way to move files to your phone (like .zips to flash), Google drive falls short.
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Click to collapse

Glad to see this thread. First thing I did was try to copy a file to my SD Card from Gdrive. Just keeps trying to open them. Only option I had was send to Dropbox from Gdrive and export from there. Kind of a waste of time.
Just wait and see what features they add on. Its still very early.

Is your phone rooted? Using ES file explorer, and having the "up to root" toggle enabled, if I went to the root directory /mnt/sdcard/download directory all of the 4 files I synced with google drive were able to be copied using ES file explorer without any problem at all.
It's a bit annoying, but for now it works for me!

Cirkustanz said:
Is your phone rooted? Using ES file explorer, and having the "up to root" toggle enabled, if I went to the root directory /mnt/sdcard/download directory all of the 4 files I synced with google drive were able to be copied using ES file explorer without any problem at all.
It's a bit annoying, but for now it works for me!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I could copy them no problem. The problem is, copied or not, they're unviewable.

Are you sure you are looking in the folder I mentioned, or are you looking in the folder that does not require root access? There is a link to those files in the directory that doesn't require root but even the thumbnail doesn't appear there.
Shrug, I pulled photos and a pc executable from that folder and copied it onto my SD card using the move option in ES file explorer which allowed me to email them to a friend.

How to enable Google Driver on my phone ?, i have download from Google Play but it's display not available in my country, hmm

When I went to the drive.google site after I installed the PC application it gave me a url to download the mobile app. I made sure "install non-market applications" was selected in my phone settings, opened up that site in my phone's browser, and installed it.

So I seem to have managed to get files from google drive onto my phone and tablet. I use an app called officesuite pro. I've got it on my prim and sgs2. It is a paid app but it connects to remote servers, google docs(drive), dropbox etc. If you access your files through there, you can copy the file, doc, zip whatever is on your google drive, and paste it to a local drive. All intact and usable.

This is crazy. As soon as my Drive was ready I transferred all my DB files to it thinking I'm all Google, so lets use it! Yeah, I can't access any of my files. With DB I could just long press a name, and download. Guess it's back to DB until Drive can do it too. Nice otherwise.

Cirkustanz said:
Are you sure you are looking in the folder I mentioned, or are you looking in the folder that does not require root access? There is a link to those files in the directory that doesn't require root but even the thumbnail doesn't appear there.
Shrug, I pulled photos and a pc executable from that folder and copied it onto my SD card using the move option in ES file explorer which allowed me to email them to a friend.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The folder you said was:
/mnt/sdcard/download , right?
I have the folder ( with a capital "D" though), except there are none of the files I made offline with drive in it.
stevemacer said:
So I seem to have managed to get files from google drive onto my phone and tablet. I use an app called officesuite pro. I've got it on my prim and sgs2. It is a paid app but it connects to remote servers, google docs(drive), dropbox etc. If you access your files through there, you can copy the file, doc, zip whatever is on your google drive, and paste it to a local drive. All intact and usable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the tip. Still, might shame to have to jump through such hoops. The other question is: does it work with non-doc files?

BK553 said:
I switched back to Dropbox (which I never REALLY left) because of this. As a way to move files to your phone (like .zips to flash), Google drive falls short.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
same here. disappointing. but i hope they will change it in the future.

Yeah, it works with any type of file, I used it to download a zip. You can do it with jpegs too but you have to make it show unsupported files. Also, another way, probably easier is to log into google drive through your browser, you can download direct from there i've noticed. Just click on the file and it should give you the option to dl. Shame they haven't put this in the app.

stevemacer said:
Yeah, it works with any type of file, I used it to download a zip. You can do it with jpegs too but you have to make it show unsupported files. Also, another way, probably easier is to log into google drive through your browser, you can download direct from there i've noticed. Just click on the file and it should give you the option to dl. Shame they haven't put this in the app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Funny I was just trying this. It does work, but it renames the file to some long weird label. Have you found a way to keep it the same name?

To be honest, i've not really tried it through the browser but when I download it through officesuite pro, it retains the original file name.

WhatsApp Orphan/Unreferenced Media Cleanup

Hello All,
Can anyone help me with one problem, please? This is regarding WhatsApp media history. It is growing too large and consuming space with unnecessary media files.
I did "Clear chat" activity for some threads I believed were obsolete. But surprisingly, although chats were cleared, media files themselves were left untouched in the file system!
As a result I now have lots of orphan media files, which are not referenced in any WhatsApp chat. I cannot simply delete WhatsApp Media folder from the file system, as I have useful media there.
So my question: is there any way to scan the WhatsApp Media folder and delete orphaned/unreferenced media files?
I'm using Galaxy S8.
Thank you!

I have exactly the same problem, also looking for a solution here.
If anyone have a clue on this, please share.
Thank you !

I'm on same page in 2019.
Whatsapp backup on android seems to do a differencial backup on all files of whatsapp folder and is always larger than whats being listed on Storage option.
My ratings are so bad: Storage says 17gb and backup says 60gb ;/
If I use file manager apps to delete dupes, some chats will not present the media.
It would be awesome to have an app to defrag whatsapp chats and media files.

Hi. I have this problem too! Storage says 19GB but actually its taking up 38GB!

Count me in as well. 2.6GB vs 3.16GB. It may not seem much but it's on a Note 5 with just 32GB of storage and I'm trying to squeeze every available byte.

Just leaving my ward.
I managed to solve this manually. Kinda. It was hell. Still a lot of orphan files.
Hope someone has an answer.

RonAshman said:
Just leaving my ward.
I managed to solve this manually. Kinda. It was hell. Still a lot of orphan files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How did you manage to (partially) clean up manually?

Any update on this issue ? Its driving me nuts having close to 20 gigs of unreferenced media in my phone.....I'm pretty sure Whatsapp can easily introduce a "cleanup" feature based on the same algorithm that generates the "storage" figure.
Once its done cleaning the Drive backup is as easy as deleting the old backup and creating a new one.
Question is what's the best way to submit this "feature request" which is in fact more like a bug report?

schaggo said:
How did you manage to (partially) clean up manually?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I downloaded everything to my pc and looked for duplicates martching crc.
Then for like a week I went over pictures deleting the ones I was sure I didn't need, and also used the file name to divide them by year/month.
Not really the best option.

I'm in 2022 and with the same issue for years. Love to know who to code for Android/IOS and have Whatsapp integration options so I could search for each media file agains each group or direct channel to do :
- remove duplicated/triplicated media content by replace the file reference in groups/conversations ;
- than process all orphaned files that are not located in group/conversations discussion.

Transfer WhatsApp Chats to New Galaxy Note Phone from PC

I had my 2nd Galaxy Note 4 show the eMMC fault and go into endless bootlooping. I thought that I had been backing up whatsapp to google, but I found out otherwise. Here is the situation:
*Note 4 (unrooted) would start up for about 20 seconds before restarting. Not enough time to backup whatsapp to google drive. I was backing up whatsapp locally though. Marshmallow 6.0.1
*I was able to install TWRP. The phone has no problem starting and staying in TWRP recovery mode. Endless bootlooping only occurs when I try to start Android
*I could see all non-root-access folders in TWRP as well as in file explorer in Windows 10 when the phone was in recovery mode and connected to PC
*I copied all whatsapp folders from the phone to PC with Windows 10 file explorer (again, only when the phone is in TWRP recovery mode)
* I realized that these files may not be enough to open the whatsapp db in a new phone due to encryption
*I then used TWRP to install Magisk
*Then I was able to use ADB to pull the whatsapp key file and wa.db file from the phone to PC
*I am able to unencrypt the database and view in WhatsApp viewer
*After 6+ years of the Note 4 (2 separate devices), I purchased the Note20 Ultra yesterday (what an upgrade!!)
Question is, what do I need to do to get the chats from my PC onto my Note 20? Phone-to-phone transfer won't work because the Note 4 won't stay on long enough. BTW, I'm almost a complete noob--I just figured these things out yesterday with the help of some amazing resources from folks like you. So a big thanks to you. I did some whatsapp db merging a few years ago when my first Note 4 died, but I don't think any of that knowledge is still relevant.

...surely it can't be as easy as transferring my media files then dropping only the msgstore.db file into the Note 20, can it?

Ok, it really was that easy.
*I copied all my non-root-access Whatsapp folders over to my unrooted Note 20. These folders included all media and the msgstore.db.crypt12 files but, of course, did not include the key nor the wa.db files as these latter files are only found in the root-access folders.
*I then signed in to a google account so that I could download Whatsapp from the Play Store
*After initial installation and before a full whatsapp setup, I signed out of all google accounts on the Note 20 in order to force a restore from the local backup that I had copied to the phone (actually, I messed up twice and Whatsapp found an old google drive backup; I had to uninstall and reinstall whatsapp twice; finally worked on the 3rd try)
*Most of my chat contents, media, and correct contact names are now on my new phone
I must not have understood the high-level details of the encryption. I thought that the key was device-specific and that moving an encrypted msgstore.db file to a new device meant that I must also move the original key with the db file so that the new device could decrypt the first time. This doesn't seem to be the case. It must be that the key is associated with the whatsapp-registered phone number because I did use the same sim card/phone number in the old and new phones. Does anybody know if that is correct?
Two slight issues that I will try to fix today include 1) some missing contact details and 2) a few missing recent whatsapp chats.
1) Most of my contacts were synced with google, so I pulled most of them to my Note 20 quite easily. I must have also had some local contacts on my old phone that I never synced with google. Can anybody post a link to a good tutorial on how to convert a contacts2.db to vCard or a similar format? It's tantalizing that my old Note 4 will start for about 20 seconds and I have tried to get into my contacts on the phone and export them to the removable SD card. It's so close. The export starts but doesn't quite finish. The result is an unfinished (408kb) vcf file on my sd card that won't open on my new phone.
2) I think that the old phone started up just long enough to download the latest whatsapp chats from the server, but not long enough for me to view them. I'm missing chats from the 3-4 days between when the old phone was wonky and I installed whatsapp on the new phone. I think that they are not downloading from the whatsapp server onto my new phone because they already downloaded to my old phone
Any thoughts on any of this?

If you can't decrypt, key file has changed.

Decrypting is not a problem. I can do it on my pc as long as I have the key file (which I do). The new phone is also able to decrypt--without the key. That is what surprised me

If you make a full backup and then make a full restore, your whatsapp will work perfectly.
You mixed things up a lot.
Msgstore.db and wa.db are never in same folder of msgstore.db.crypt12.
Msgstore.db and all other databases (*.db files) are not encrypted.
You don't need key file to read them.
Only *.crypt12 files are encrypted.
For them, you will never can decrypt them without key file.
About google backups, they are NOT encrypted.
All files backuped to google, are unencrypted.
Taken care.
Your worries are unnecessary.
Keep your backups safe and secure and you will have no one problem.

Ok.
So I did make a complete backup of the rooted Note 4 to my external SD card using twrp. I now have 2 phones: the old Note 4 which won't start and the new Note 20 which I don't want to root at the moment.
How could I make a full restore, so that my whatsapp will work perfectly?

Ok, I think I got this now. I've read up on the various threads related to this and I think I know what to do now

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.
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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.
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Click to collapse
thank you pool shark.. i tried what you did/suggested and it worked. thanks.

[Whatsapp] Copy working DB=Crash. Why?

I do copy msgstore.db(even from fresh whatsapp install) and when use new file (premissions and owner are correct) whatsapp is starting crash.
Any idea why so?
(when starting to use original file whatsapp is starting fine)

WhatsApp is trashware, ditch before it gives you a good dose of malware.
I won't allow it on any of my devices, it is trouble. Keep all social media apps off the device, they are a multiple vector security risk.
If the social media site isn't fully usable through the browser don't use it. Even then... watch your six.

not sure why u liked to answer so to tech question....

The copied db is corrupted. So easy.

xXx yYy said:
The copied db is corrupted. So easy.
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Click to collapse
Files are exactly same after copy, i even used diff command to be sure... i have several working renamed msgstore.db files(if i rename them to msgstore.db then ok). But when i do copy them to msgstore.db then crash is happening.

Then do a LOGCAT to get the very reason why WA crashes when loading db in question.