Oreo: force rescan of images - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hello,
I have a new phone with Android Oreo, and a SD Card containing a lot of images and music. I am facing the following problems:
1.) On the music folder, there exists album art, so I created a file called .nopics in Order to exclude this folder from being scanned. However, the image files in the different subfolders are still visible in apps like Whatsapp. How can I clear the image cache, or force all media to be rescanned? I think the com.android.providers.media system app exists no more. How is this done in Oreo?
2.) Some files on my SD card get the wrong date, not the file date, but obviously the internal (EXIF?) Date is suddenly set to the year 2038, leading to old files appearing as new in apps like Telegram or Whatsapp. The Google photos app is not affected, but all old-fashioned image pickers now show the wrong order. Any idea what may cause this, and how to fix?

Why no answer? Google should be smart enough to implement this by default now, the rescan apps on market don't work, android is such a garbage jail. gnu OS pls

Related

[Q] Facebook Image Issue

whenever I use the facebook app (the newest version from Marketplace ) , it saves every image on the phone's memory which takes up space, so my question is; How can I make it so that the images will be saved on the storage card or that the images won't be saved at all.
Good question, no answer? everybody busy looking for a solution?
may be we need to install facebook onto the storage card ? and delete every old file from ram/rom. Does it work ?
It saved the cache to the storage card and will show up in your album, which is annoying. I set the below registry value and no longer have to look at it. ClearTemp will get rid of it until you use the Facebook app again.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\HTC\HTCAlbum\Ignored]
"Temp"="\\Temp"

[Q] Are apps always installed on the card?

I have just purchased an X10mini pro and have been playing around with it today. I was wondering if apps are always installed on the card, or are they sometimes installed on the phones memory? How do I change the default location of where apps are installed?
From what I gather Linux based distros are different in that they don't have a registry etc. When an app is run is it purely from the .apk location or are different files from the app copied to different locations when the app is installed?
They're pretty much universally installed to the phones memory though some software will install additional data to sd. It's an unfortunate limitation of Android 1.6, if an when we get 2.2 this'll change. On a rooted phone there should be ways around this but I haven't looked into it personally.
Ok thanks for clearing that up. I have now rooted my phone and see that the default location for apps is /system/app/. Does everything to do with the program just reside there (like a portable app) or are program libraries etc copied to other locations within the phone? For things like email programs where do they store the individual emails?
/system/app/ contains all the "system" applications (i.e. the stuff that's pre-installed on the phone) - you can't usually change these, unless you've got root access
/data/ is the user writeable section of the phone's memory - /data/app/ is where the stuff you install goes, along with the data any running apps save (unless they're specifically programmed to save stuff to the sd card instead)
So the email program at /system/app/ Email.apk where does that store it's emails? Does it store the emails in /data/ or somewhere else? What about browser cache, where is that stored?
Does anyone know where I can download a guide on file structure to try and understand what exactly does what?

[Q] WhatsApp history restore does not restore images

Hi guys,
I've just re-installed WhatsApp. I manually backed up my chat history before uninstalling using the built-in backup feature. When I re-installed it, the installation successfully found the backup and automatically restored it. I can see all my messages but the problem is the thumbnails of previous pictures do not open the full image. When I click on the thumbnail it says "Sorry, this media file doesn't exist on your SD card."
However when I check the folder, WhatsApp/Media/Images on my internal SD card, they are all still in there. It seems like the links are broken. Any new pictures that I receive after the re-installation work fine. And these new pictures are also in the said folder along with the previous pictures.
I have tried forcing a rescan of the media; moving all the pictures into another folder, rescanning, moving them back in then rescanning. I am on CM10. The WhatsApp folder is on the internal SD partition as it's always been (even in CM7).
Does anyone have any ideas?
CVonV said:
Hi guys,
I've just re-installed WhatsApp. I manually backed up my chat history before uninstalling using the built-in backup feature. When I re-installed it, the installation successfully found the backup and automatically restored it. I can see all my messages but the problem is the thumbnails of previous pictures do not open the full image. When I click on the thumbnail it says "Sorry, this media file doesn't exist on your SD card."
However when I check the folder, WhatsApp/Media/Images on my internal SD card, they are all still in there. It seems like the links are broken. Any new pictures that I receive after the re-installation work fine. And these new pictures are also in the said folder along with the previous pictures.
I have tried forcing a rescan of the media; moving all the pictures into another folder, rescanning, moving them back in then rescanning. I am on CM10. The WhatsApp folder is on the internal SD partition as it's always been (even in CM7).
Does anyone have any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
try wipng data in settings >>applicatiin>>manage apps >>whatsapp >>clear data
and sign in again
or try to send an error report to whats app about this matter
Soul reaper said:
try wipng data in settings >>applicatiin>>manage apps >>whatsapp >>clear data
and sign in again
or try to send an error report to whats app about this matter
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that's pretty much the same as uninstalling and reinstalling. but yeah gave that a try anyway and still the same result
and yeah i did email whatsapp support.. not sure if i'll get a reply though
Just don't think that's possible as of now. Maybe they'll enable it later. If they respond to your email, can you post their response here for all of us to see?
I think/ am quite sure that Whatsapp for now does not re-allow images to be put on their backup servers because of the space it uses. (for millions of users)
Guess that will be a feature will not get for the moment.
it's not restored (uploaded) back onto their servers..
i've restored many times before on CM7 with the thumbnail links (well pointers to be exact) to the full-sized images on the sd card being correct
but i've never experienced this breakage of the "pointers" =\
i will post their reply if they ever do
Loveleen Kaur (WhatsApp Support)
Jan 09 09:07 (PST)
Hi there,
Thanks for your response. Apparently, this issue is relative to switching from CM7 to CM10. We apologize for the inconvenience. We hope to resolve these types of issues in the future. Unfortunately, we cannot comment on the timeline of when a fix will be available.
If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us. We would be happy to help!
--
Loveleen Kaur
[email protected]
WhatsApp Support Team
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
:/
interestingly enough.. the CM10.1 09/01 2nd build for the LG P990 fixed this whole problem!
Hi
After reading that email response and not seeing no update tells me this has not been resolved?
I just downgraded my phone back to my old one, which in the past I successfully transferred whatsapp (Xperia Mini Pro > Xperia Z)
Now for a temporary reason I need to transfer back from the Z to the Xperia mini pro.
Even though I have factory reset the Xperia mini pro and firmware updated it, when I go to restore the whatsapp, but I am missing the images between the time I got the Xperia Z.
There is like a 6 Month gap, all the Xperia Z media is not linked although they are all in the same folder?
There is a linking issue since the old ones load?
Any thoughts on this.
The only think i noticed that has changed was that the Xperia Z had the files on the Internal SD, where as the Xperia Mini Pro had them on the External SD... Which would explain it, but I cant actually put files on the internal space (it has none for user use)
I would like to resolve this at some point soon.
Many Thanks
i am facing a similar issue as well.
i had to send my xperia z for repair, so i did a backup of the whatsapp folder and did a restore to my old HTC desire s.
whatsapp on the HTC phone was saying that the media is not found (only for old media files), but new media received on HTC phone was ok.
after i got my xperia z back, i did a backup of the whatsapp folder on the htc phone and restored on my xperia z.
now xperia z is able to view all my old media files that were originally received on the xperia phone. but when i try to view any media that i received on the HTC phone, whatsapp is giving the "media not found error". but all the media files are inside the whatsapp directory.
Yeah I just got a note 3 a few weeks ago and transferred my WhatsApp folder from my LG 2X. Got the same problem again. They were both stored on internal SD. I don't think I can be bothered anymore.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
I also encountered this problem "sorry this media file doesn't exist on your SD card" and the images are blurred, and after playing it for a while on my ace 2, I finally solved it. Its Whatsapp folder pointer problem.
Basically you need to use a file explorer, and there should be 2 folders, sdcard0 (internal phone memory) and extsdcard (external sd card), your backup (conversations, images, videos) are in extsdcard, and you need to copy the media folder in extsdcard/whatsapp folder and then paste it to sdcard0/whatsapp folder (overwrite), and that's it. If your sdcard0/whatsapp/media contains some images already, then you got to copy the images from extsdcard to sdcard0 (not by folder overwrite).
Hope this helps
I'm having a similar problem.
I downgraded my Samsung Galaxy S from CM11 (which I used for about 6 months) to a custom ICS mod. Even though al my media files are located in the correct folder on my internal SD card and Whatsapp properly reloaded my chat database, Whatsapp doesn't seem to be able to locate the pictures I received or took in the last 6 months. However, pictures from before CM11 are detected properly.
Did something changes in the filesystem setup between ICS and CM11? If so, is there a way to correct this for Whatsapp??
right now the offical last version is 2.11.378 which i downloaded from play store after a clean new rom and i got the "unable to restore" message. then i had downloaded whatsapp+ because of the more options. so i said lets try nothing to loose and voilaaa succesfully restored even with the pictures and everything. i checked the + version. right now it is 2.11.301
thewalekk said:
right now the offical last version is 2.11.378 which i downloaded from play store after a clean new rom and i got the "unable to restore" message. then i had downloaded whatsapp+ because of the more options. so i said lets try nothing to loose and voilaaa succesfully restored even with the pictures and everything. i checked the + version. right now it is 2.11.301
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just tried now with Whatsapp+ but still nothing...
Those who cant get their history back, here is the %100 working answer.
First rename your whatsapp folder something else just incase.
Then download whatsapp+ 6.15D and install
Rename your folder back again as whatsapp
Open the app and register your phone just like original version
(If you had a plus backup before the app will ask to restore the plus backup. Pass it and register as normal)
Now restore your messages (you will see it will be restored)
Now go to the plus options and take a full plus backup (not normal whatsapp backup! Plus backup!)
Now rename whatsapp folder again just incase and uninstall whatsapp+ and install the latest plus version
Rename the folder back
This time use plus restore option when you first open the app
And there you go... latest version and your all messages are back )
P.S : Sometimes you can get an error when you register your phone like "your client's base has chaned" if you get the error install the latest original from play store and uninstall it and do the steps from the begenning...
b1inarical said:
i am facing a similar issue as well.
i had to send my xperia z for repair, so i did a backup of the whatsapp folder and did a restore to my old HTC desire s.
whatsapp on the HTC phone was saying that the media is not found (only for old media files), but new media received on HTC phone was ok.
after i got my xperia z back, i did a backup of the whatsapp folder on the htc phone and restored on my xperia z.
now xperia z is able to view all my old media files that were originally received on the xperia phone. but when i try to view any media that i received on the HTC phone, whatsapp is giving the "media not found error". but all the media files are inside the whatsapp directory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi
A friend just experienced the same "Sorry, this media file doesn't exist on your SD card." problem when he moved his WhatsApp chats between two phones, like b1inarical did with his Xperia Z and HTC Desire S.
Has anyone found a technical workaround to this perennial WhatsApp account transfer problem, or is it innate and cannot be solved?
Thanks in advance.
This worked for me - backup the entire WhatsApp directory from the old phone from the SDCARD (or wherever it is on your phone), then copy it to the new phone BEFORE you install WhatsApp. When you install it on your new phone choose to RESTORE THE MESSAGE backup and the images should be linked to the correct directory on your phone
sam10000 said:
Hi
A friend just experienced the same "Sorry, this media file doesn't exist on your SD card." problem when he moved his WhatsApp chats between two phones, like b1inarical did with his Xperia Z and HTC Desire S.
Has anyone found a technical workaround to this perennial WhatsApp account transfer problem, or is it innate and cannot be solved?
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sam10000 said:
Hi
A friend just experienced the same "Sorry, this media file doesn't exist on your SD card." problem when he moved his WhatsApp chats between two phones, like b1inarical did with his Xperia Z and HTC Desire S.
Has anyone found a technical workaround to this perennial WhatsApp account transfer problem, or is it innate and cannot be solved?
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have found the root cause, but not a way to fix this issue.
By switching WhatsApp from a Nexus 5 to a Galaxy S2 (have to send N5 in RMA) I restored conversations but media link is broken, although the folder has been placed correctly.
By opening your WhatsApp DB (/data/data/com.whatsapp/msgstore.db) with a text editor like Notepad++, look for
Code:
/storage/emulated/0/Whatsapp
This is the WhatsApp folder on my Nexus 5. However, the internal SD card on the Galaxy S2 is /storage/sdcard0. Since WhatsApp is quite stupid, it saves the FULL path in the DB, instead of pointing straight to /sdcard/.
If I open this DB with ANY SQLite browser, I can find only few of these paths, contained in the media_refs table. Only 51 results are shown, while I have thousands of audio clips and pictures. Messages table does contain many information, including the Whatsapp server where the media has been downloaded, but not the path on the device.
Does anybody know how to pull this information? It is displayed when opened in Notepad++ (and I can see thousands of results searching for /storage/emulated/0/) but the DB table does not show all of them...
Sorry to bump an old thread but is the only thread I can find with a similar issue to mine. HTC M8 (lolipop) is in for repair and managed to back up my chat history to a loan phone from a friend HTC desire 610 (kitkat). Chat history has been restored with no issues. But the media images are "not on SD card" however if I manually browse they are there. Did anyone find a solution or a way to change the path as per Oliver's post?
Strange part is that videos have moved over with no issues. Just images.

[Q] I need to reset mediaserver database

Hi all,
I added some music files to my external Sd card, unfortunately a couple of folders were incorrectly named... I renamed them but now both the stock player and Google Play continues to show the incorrect, old folder names as the album names, which is pretty annoying.
I am on a rooted device, I already tried to delete Google Play's database but on the next reboot it was rebuilt identical to before.
There is any manner to have mediaserver's database rebuilt from scratch? I already tryed to stop it then start it again... Nil. Have I to delete the database to have it completely rebuilt? Lol, I can't even locate it on the filesystem. Despite this I can't think any other solution to solve but I'm open to any suggestions, tia.
reS28raM said:
Hi all,
I added some music files to my external Sd card, unfortunately a couple of folders were incorrectly named... I renamed them but now both the stock player and Google Play continues to show the incorrect, old folder names as the album names, which is pretty annoying.
I am on a rooted device, I already tried to delete Google Play's database but on the next reboot it was rebuilt identical to before.
There is any manner to have mediaserver's database rebuilt from scratch? I already tryed to stop it then start it again... Nil. Have I to delete the database to have it completely rebuilt? Lol, I can't even locate it on the filesystem. Despite this I can't think any other solution to solve but I'm open to any suggestions, tia.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to delete the data and cache of the Stock player and Google Music and afterwards if you start those Apps it should be as if you would start them the first time, so they would check your folders for music again.
Scarface1991 said:
Try to delete the data and cache of the Stock player and Google Music and afterwards if you start those Apps it should be as if you would start them the first time, so they would check your folders for music again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't think it works that way... Whose apps don't scans folders, they take all infos about media from the mediaservice server. I tried what you said with Music Player and it didn't work, I didn't even try with Google Music 'cos that app has 250Mb+ of data (!) so I suppose that' s all of my music
What puzzles me is that I found a database with the index of all my music on extSdCard, it is under /data/data/com.android.providers.media/databases/external.db (you can view the contents with root explorer), I deleted it after a backup, reboot and... Nothing, the database was recreated exactly identical to before. It was not the right database evidently... Again.
What the hell, that mediaservice's database is well hidden!
Someone can help, please?
You can try the Rescan Media ROOT App but if that won't work I have no idea.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.addz.mediascannerroot&hl=de
Scarface1991 said:
You can try the Rescan Media ROOT App but if that won't work I have no idea.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.addz.mediascannerroot&hl=de
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
App's name is inviting indeed! Thanks, I'll try that. :thumbup:
Update (if someone else need it)
Android Media Tracker has issues on Samsung phones when it encounter a broken mp3 file. Solved using the app MP3Dit, which is not only an ID3Tag editor but it is capable to connect directly to the service and adjust things there also.
Five months to solve this s**t!

[Q] 4.1.2 --- video / image files, thumbnail and cache

Hi
I will be passing on my company phone for someone else to use for couple of weeks, and I am having some privacy concerns about it. I have already transferred all images/videos from the phone's ext SD card, but now I am worried of how I can securely erase the data. I don't wanna buy a new SD card just for this, so I was wondering if there is any way to safely erase/destroy those data.
For starters, I got my self 'secure file deletion' from play store, which allows to wipe off selected data off the phone memory and the external card. Which I did. Images/videos are stored under:
/storage/extSdCard/DCIM/Camera
But after wiping those off, I realised that not all image/video data is cleaned off. The OS also stores thumbnails for those media. Surprisingly, those are stored in phone memory and location can't be changed:
/storage/sdcard0/DCIM/.thumbnails
In there, there are .JPGs (thumbnails) and a strange '.thumbdataXXXX' file. So, I use 'secure file deletion' to remove those as well. Funny thing is that even after erasing those, I can still see the thumbnails of the corresponding video/image (but when I select it, it says 'file not found' - which is expected, because its already been wiped). Nevertheless, my guess is that the thumbnails of those videos/images are also cached elsewhere. But where?
My question is - is that all there is to it? Is the OS storing any more related data in regard to images/videos that I need to wipe? Are those actions I have taken enough to give me peace of mind that my media are safely wiped off beyond recovery?
I found that the secure deletion apps are very few, most of them require root and most even don't work properly (e.g. files reappearing after wipe etc). There are some good ones like 'ishredder 3 pro' and 'clean master' that offer secure wipe options - but only for wiping off entire phone/card memory - which is not what I want here. Any more suggestions?
The phone is a non-rooted Samsung with 4.1.2 Android OS on it. I don't wanna root the phone and I don't want to wipe entire ext card - so any suggestions, please bear that in mind.
Makes me wondering why there isn't any build-in function to the OS for secure deletion of files? Sure it would be slower and not everyone would applaud it, but it could be enabled on demand e.g. via Developer Options...
ta!
I have also noticed, that ever since I started using 'secure file deletion', when I connect via USB to copy files from the extSD to the PC, I get "device not connected" errors every few files I copy. Then, I have to use 'enable usb debugging' (from Dev Options) in order to get the device to show up again.
Any thoughts on my initial queries will be most appreciated. Someone must have noticed those issues. Perhaps they are not specific to 4.1.2 but maybe other versions of the OS...
jstoner said:
Funny thing is that even after erasing those, I can still see the thumbnails of the corresponding video/image (but when I select it, it says 'file not found' - which is expected, because its already been wiped)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just another observation regarding this. If I go into File Manager and nagivate to "/storage/extSdCard/DCIM/Camera" and then go back to Gallery, then the thumbs of videos that are already deleted don't show up. That's a workaround for refreshing the cache (without having to do a full restart).
Anyone noticed those issues, or is it just me???

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