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I'm on Android 2.3.4, Xperia Active. And I have downloaded and installed Instagram.

Normally when I take pictures on the stock Camera app, my photos gets sent to sdcard/DCIM/100ANDRO. However, when I installed Instagram and started to use it, I notice that it created a new folder under sdcard/DCIM and called it Camera and that is where it places the pictures I take inside the app. What's worse is that, aside from creating the sdcard/DCIM/Camera folder, it also creates the same image inside sdcard/DCIM/100ANDRO. So whenever I take an Instagram photo, that picture gets 2 copies plus the third one with the applied filters on a separate folder called Instagram.

This may not have been an issue because I can always clear the sdcard/DCIM/Camera folder every after some time. But the thing is, it's showing up on my Gallery app as two Camera folders.

The top one is the one default used by the Camera app and the bottom one is created by Instagram.

I thought I fixed it when I placed a .nomedia file inside the Instagram-created Camera folder. Sure, after I force reload the Gallery app, it will hide sdcard/DCIM/Camera then. But when I take another photo on Instagram, it resurfaces on the Gallery app again. This time, it only shows the latest taken picture as viewable. And the old contents are shown as broken images (see the one hilited in yellow below).

enter image description here

Sure enough when I force reload the Gallery app, it hides again but I don't want to have to force reload it each and every time. I know that this is just a simple problem for some but I'm really not too pleased to see duplicates of the same image showing up.

I'm really sorry for the lengthy post but I'm not sure how to describe my problem so I tried to put in as much detail as I can. If you need more info, please say so and I'll gladly add it.

So in essence, the questions are:

  • How do I permanently hide the unnecessary Camera folder that Instagram created?
  • Is there a way to make Instagram just use default 100ANDRO folder instead of creating a new Camera one AND creating a duplicate on the default folder?

Again, sorry if this seems all confusing, please try to bear it with me.

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  • Are you sure both are identical photos. I suppose, one is original & another is with instagram effect.
    – iOS
    May 5, 2012 at 13:56
  • No. The one with Instagram filters applied are placed inside it's respective Instagram folder inside the Pictures folder I think. The image Instagram creates on 100ANDRO and Camera are the same. They only have different file names.
    – Propeller
    May 5, 2012 at 15:44

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Use an app like gallery excluder. Alternatively you could do it manually.

in the folder that you want to exclude create an empty file and name it .nomedia than you need to delete the media scanner database. Go to:

Settings -> Apllications -> All -> Media Storage -> Clear Data

Now reboot your phone. It might take a while for your pictures to appear again but these instagram folders will not be there.

Instagram unfortunately doesn't have an option to choose a folder for saving pictures.

If the above doesn't work or if you want a really cool gallery app try QuickPic.

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  • Just tried this now. It again showed the Camera folder on the Gallery app after I snapped a picture inside Instagram. The only difference is that now, I don't see the broken images on my example above. But the problem still remains where the unnecessary Camera folder is visible. :(
    – Propeller
    May 4, 2012 at 15:37
  • I'm puzzled than. I did this several times before and it always worked. The only reason I can see as to why it doesn't work is that 'DCIM/Camera' is supposed to be the the standard camera folder so the gallery might ignore the '.nomedia' because of that. You could try using Quickpic which is a far superior gallery app and it supports hiding folders without .nomedia.
    – user13391
    May 4, 2012 at 15:46
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    It's because of Sony's customizations. AOSP devices and roms based on that save it to camera.
    – user13391
    May 4, 2012 at 15:59
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    Saving to 100ANDRO actually makes a bit more sense than saving to Camera. The DCF standard says the folder a digital camera stores its images on must be called a name matching "100ABCDE" and you can't actually expect any application to be able to find and import your photos if it is called any other way. In practice it might work anyway with some programs.
    – Nova
    May 5, 2012 at 8:18
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    @Erik most programs scan the whole DCIM folder including all sub-folders.
    – user13391
    May 5, 2012 at 8:54
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If you format your SD card with the EXT2 file system you can create a symlink from Camera to 100ANDRO. If you do this, any app that tries to read or write to Camera will be redirected to 100ANDRO. To do this, you will need a PC running Linux, OSX or another Unix. As I don't have one available, I unfortunately cannot give you any exact instructions.

Note that you won't be able to mount your phone in MSC mode on Windows if you do this. Also, I'm not 100% sure that Gingerbread does support EXT-formatted SD cards.

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  • It would still show up as two folders.
    – user13391
    May 5, 2012 at 8:53
  • Yes, but this would make Instagram use the default folder. He'd still have to use Gallery Exclude to hide the other one.
    – Nova
    May 5, 2012 at 10:03
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    Gallery excluder adds a .nomedia file inside the folder so it would hide both.
    – user13391
    May 5, 2012 at 10:30

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