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I have a non-rooted Android phone running 4.0.4 (ICS). The phone has 3GB of internal storage and I have inserted a 16GB SD card. The SD card contains a number of audio and video files.

When I opened the stock Gallery app, the directories on the SD card were displayed as expected. However, there was one small problem: multiple copies of each video were being displayed.

Wondering if something had happened to the SD card, I unmounted it and inserted it into the card reader in my computer. After mounting the card, I opened a terminal and ran:

find * | grep .mp4

But the results were exactly what I expected - there was only a single copy of each video on the card. None of the files were duplicated.

Next, I tried clearing the cache of the Gallery app (Settings->Apps->Gallery->Clear Data). After relaunching the app, I discovered even more copies of each video.

One important detail to note: only the videos on the SD card appear duplicated. None of the videos on internal storage suffer from this problem.

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  • Oh, and I forgot to mention: other media players like VLC only display one copy of each video. So this appears to be specific to the gallery app.
    – Nathan Osman
    Apr 22, 2013 at 19:56
  • Do you have DropBox with its automatic camera upload feature enabled?
    – wbogacz
    Apr 22, 2013 at 20:11
  • Though not identical, you might want to check I'm seeing duplicated images and videos on Gallery, as the solution could apply to your case as well.
    – Izzy ♦
    Apr 22, 2013 at 20:18
  • @wbogacz: No, I don't have the DropBox app installed.
    – Nathan Osman
    Apr 22, 2013 at 20:42
  • @Izzy: Turns out that after clearing the cache for the Media Storage app, the duplicates have disappeared. If you want to post that as an answer, I'll gladly accept it.
    – Nathan Osman
    Apr 22, 2013 at 22:22

1 Answer 1

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Though it's not the identical situation, the solution which worked out for I'm seeing duplicated images and videos on Gallery might apply here as well:

  1. Go to Settings→Apps→Manage Apps
  2. Select the "All Apps" tab
  3. Find the Gallery app, open its entry, tap "clear cache"
  4. Do the same for the Media Storage app
  5. Have the Media Scanner running again. This can be triggered by either
    • a reboot of the device (ugh!)
    • unmounting/mounting the external SDCard if any (hm...)
    • attach the device to your PC via USB, optionally copy some file to it, detach it again (ok...)
    • for repeated use, take a look at apps like e.g. Rescan Media, Scan Media, or SDrescan (yeah!)
  6. Check if the duplicates are gone. If not, repeat everything, but this time additionally select to "delete data"
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