Why I can't see all images in the gallery?

Question

My Phone is SYMPHONY Xplorer W35. Android version JellyBean 4.1.1 Recently I'm facing a problem. Sometimes I download images from my PC to my mobile phone. But unfortunately these images are not in the gallery apps. For this when I need to upload an image from messenger I can't upload them because they are not in the gallery. But after few times the images are automatically shown in the gallery. (My messenger doesn't support uploading file from file manager)

Answer 1

This very much depends on how you upload the images to the device. In order for the gallery app to pick them up, they must be added to the "media library", which is the job of the media-scanner. So that one needs to run after you've uploaded the image(s).

There are quite a few events triggering the media scanner to do its job – but e.g. uploading a file via FTP, or copying it with a file manager do not belong to that category. Things you can do to trigger it include:

• rebooting the device (media-scanner always runs at BOOT_COMPLETED)
• unmount and mount your SD card (it also runs whenever a new medium is attached)
• trigger a media scan via the the command line
• use a media scanner trigger app to trigger a scan manually

Pick your choice depending on how often you need to do that. If it happens once a year, a reboot probably is the easiest approach. If you need it daily, one of those apps will be the better solution ;)

Answer 2

There might be a file in the folder with the images not visible called ".nomedia". The file, by existing, tells the android system to not include the images in the folder in the media scan. That means that many gallery apps won't see the images. If you have a file manager installed, and know what folder the image is in, you can navigate to the folder and remove the ".nomedia" file. If there is no such file but you manage to find the image it might be another problem.

Answer 3

Once you delete .nomedia files & if you still cant view those pictures, you need to rename the folder e.g. from DCIM to DCIM2. Once you can view them on gallery, you can rename back to original folder name e.g. DCIM2 to DCIM. same goes to other folders. Tq

Answer 4

I had this issue on a completely different phone and version of Android, but both the issue and the explanation can be universal. In my case, it was the existence of the .nomedia file in the directory I was trying to see in the Gallery app. This is documented in the Android Developer documentation under Storage Options and, as of this writing appears in a sidebar as follows:

Hiding your files from the Media Scanner

Include an empty file named .nomedia in your external files directory (note the dot prefix in the filename). This prevents media scanner from reading your media files and providing them to other apps through the MediaStore content provider.

In my case, some application that I installed must have put this file in my Download directory, hiding all of the images there from the Gallery app (and others as well).

Solution: All I had to do was delete the .nomedia file from the directory and the contents became visible in the Gallery app. You can simply connect your phone to your computer and browse to the directory to accomplish this, or use a file manager on your phone configured to view hidden dot files.