So Google Pixel has a really cool selling point. Since the Camera is linked with your google drive (which has unlimited storage for regular HD photos), you essentially can be taking an unlimited amount of photos. However the Pixel is also stupidly priced (its a great phone, but if Im going to burn $1000 its going to be on an ACTUAL computer)
It got me thinking though is there a way accomplish the same task on a regular old android? I had a few Ideas an hit some brick walls.
1) My first idea was to download a photo app that would allow me to change where the storage is placed. There is one that exists however I was simply able to create a folder inside the path /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/Camera. This might prove useful, but I am unable to change it directly into the google drive app.
2)My second idea was to download a file manager and try to change the route directly that way, possibly by deleting /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/Camera and simply replacing the Google drive folder into that location and giving it the same name. I seem unable to do this though as I can not "Move" or alter the drive folder at all in the file manager I downloaded.
3)My THIRD idea was to create a symbolic link to the /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/Camera connecting the Google drive folder to that folder. I downloaded a Terminal Emulator and with my elementary knowledge of BASH gave su access and attempted to link to the drive. I was unable to do this as any Camera image I take STILL saves directly to the phone!
Can someone please laugh at me already and tell me there is an easy way to accomplish this? I just want to STOP my phone from saving photos to my memory and simply have them stashed in my Google Drive! I REALIZE its possible to syn the two, however I dont want to have to constantly be emptying my storage.
Maybe I didn't get what you asked, but couldn't you just download Google Photos from Play Store and enable synchronisation?
EDIT: Missed your last lines, I'm sorry dunno why, anyway, on Oreo you can automatically empty your memory every 30/60/90 days through settings. Unfortunately I don't know if there's a way on Nougat and below.
Related
There's lot's of apps that do this sort of thing, but none of them do exactly what I want (from what I've found so far).
I have tried DoubleTwist, but it tries to automatically sync my ENTIRE music collection to my phone. That's ridiculous and unnecessary. I don't need my entire 100+ GB collection with me at all times.
What I'm looking for is something like this: I want to set a specific folder that automatically syncs all of its content with my phone and/or tablet. Kind of like how Dropbox works. I copy something into the Dropbox folder, and eventually that something is on the cloud, accessible by me wherever I am.
Alternatively, I wouldn't mind simply Right Clicking in Windows, and then "Sending To" one of my mobile devices, as long as they're on the same WiFi network as my laptop.
Does something like this exist?
Ps. I'm on a Samsung Galaxy 3 & Note 8.
nubreed000 said:
There's lot's of apps that do this sort of thing, but none of them do exactly what I want (from what I've found so far).
I have tried DoubleTwist, but it tries to automatically sync my ENTIRE music collection to my phone. That's ridiculous and unnecessary. I don't need my entire 100+ GB collection with me at all times.
What I'm looking for is something like this: I want to set a specific folder that automatically syncs all of its content with my phone and/or tablet. Kind of like how Dropbox works. I copy something into the Dropbox folder, and eventually that something is on the cloud, accessible by me wherever I am.
Alternatively, I wouldn't mind simply Right Clicking in Windows, and then "Sending To" one of my mobile devices, as long as they're on the same WiFi network as my laptop.
Does something like this exist?
Ps. I'm on a Samsung Galaxy 3 & Note 8.
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did you try Google Drive ?
me1mon said:
did you try Google Drive ?
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I actually stopped using GDrive in favour of Drop Box because it wouldn't automatically upload files from my laptop to the cloud storage.
Are you saying that if I copy a music file into Google Drive it will be on my phone? Even when it's offline? (That's the key)
nubreed000 said:
I actually stopped using GDrive in favour of Drop Box because it wouldn't automatically upload files from my laptop to the cloud storage.
Are you saying that if I copy a music file into Google Drive it will be on my phone? Even when it's offline? (That's the key)
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Of course not if you are offline, there is no software can do it without internet connection
you should look for software that sync over WIFI if you are in same network. I suggest you to google "sync over WIFI"
First let me preface my inquiry with a few statements.
Renaming pics was previously an inconvenience but now I make my living with these photos so this has become an absolute nightmare.
I am absolutely so frustrated with what I can only describe as Google's stupidity. For being some of the smartest people in the world they do some things that a three year old would know better.
Also I have tried to do research on this before posting a new thread here, but all I find is outdated piecemeal information .
So please don't judge me. I've tried my best to figure this out without creating a new and/or redundant thread but I need someone who actually knows what is going on and who can explain to me what I can and can't do and how to fix what I've already done and how to set up my process in the future so as to complete my task as efficiently as possible. I mean really, isn't that what the goal of all this digital interaction is supposed to be about?
Now that I got that off my chest, here's my situation:
I work in what I call a "fun" business. I take pics and videos of guests on my phone (Android 4.4.4).
Not being able to rename the pics on the SD card from a garble of random letters and numbers to something identifiable is so STUPID it's incomprehensible. The devices are designed to take thousands of pics and we're told to store the pics on the SD card to save storage space on our devices, but we then can't rename them to something we can identify? Whether this was an accidental oversight or on purpose, my three year old niece would know better than that.
That being said, I do understand that the limitations of 4.4 don't allow third party apps to make certain changes to files on the external storage (SD) card.
So here's my delimma: I moved my pics to the SD card before I realized this limitation. So now I have hundreds of pics I need to post to Facebook, etc., but I need to rename them so I can identify them before I start posting.
Also I'm ASSUMING that I CAN rename a pic that is stored on my device's internal storage. If I am incorrect about that please correct me on that issue before moving forward with a solution.
If that assumption is correct I then am assuming that the easiest fix would be to transfer the pics back to the native internal storage and rename them there.
But again 4.4.4 seems to also limit my ability to move/transfer/copy/paste the pics from the SD card back onto the phone's internal storage.
I have thought about transferring the pics to cloud storage where I can rename them, but then I have two copies of the same pics but with different names, which is another nightmare scenario. (In the end I would like to have a renamed (identifiable) copy of the pics on my phone (SD card preferably, but if not practical, then on my phone's internal storage) and one on the cloud. (Any suggestions on the best cloud storage for pics and videos?)
Then I could (can I?) transfer the renamed pics back to my SD card so I have offline access to the pics. But this seems highly inefficient and time consuming. And then if I did this process then I would need to then continually delete the unrenamed pics because of storage issues on the phone, again inefficient.
And using a desktop is not practical as I'm working remotely and I really need to rename immediately as the pics start piling up quickly.
So my first step is going to be to change the default storage location of the pics to the internal storage of the device so I can test whether or not I can rename the pics immediately.
Whether or not this adjustment works for my future pics, I still have the issue of renaming the pics I have already moved to my SD card.
So........
1. Is there a workaround for renaming the pics on the SD card?
2. If not, is there a workaround for moving the pics back to internal storage? In this case I could use a Windows desktop to facilitate this operation as it should be a one-time operation, assuming I can immediately rename my future pics that I'm now going to store by default on the device's internal storage.
I would greatly appreciate any complete and consider suggestions on how to best address my problems. Thanking you in advance.
Vincent
You are correct that Google revoked the permission for third party apps to write to external storage. The only permanent fix seems to be patching your platform.xml to include media_rw group. Do you have root? If so install sdfix: kitkat writable microsd from the play store, follow the prompts and reboot. As always backup first just in case something goes wrong in the process. And you don't need to keep the app. Worked for me on both 4.4.2 and 5.1.1. Hopefully this helps.
You are also correct that you can copy or move the pictures to internal memory and rename them from there, but you should also be able to use your phone's built-in file manager to rename them on the SD card.
I just can't believe it was that simple. I have several File Manager apps on my phone.
I didn't really think about an Android stock File Manager.
I didn't know which one it even was.
I should have picked up on the error message specific verbiage about "third party apps".
I ran a test on what I believe is the Android stock File Manager app and I think it worked.
I'll test it again later and post back the results.
That was the solution. Just using the stock file manager allowed me to rename pics on the SD card.
Thanx for the help. My life is so much easier now!
Sent from my Z987 using XDA-Developers mobile app
How can I change default folder location for Google Photos on Android? D'you know any possibility to do this? Or maybe someone have made another compilation of it's opensource code? Or maybe there is any app that makes it hapens?
3 years ago it was not possible i think, but maybe something was changed? I got a lot of photos on my phone and everytime i'm moving them to SD card, Google Photos thinks that it need to be restored from the disk and in a moment I have them twice everywhere - on SD card and on phone memory. Confusing, don't You think? Every time i got my phone memory full of photos, even if my card is still empty (or also if i will have card full with duplicates).
Heres more - i need an high quality of theese photos, so i can't participate in Google Compression Program, or whatever gives me unlimited storage space, with lower quality. Not cool. But if i only could change the default folder to SD card... Maybe something bit more complicated, like with rooting and changing advanced setings?
D'you know any possibility to do this? Or maybe someone have made another compilation of it's opensource code? Or maybe there is any app that makes it hapens?
I will be very grateful for any help.
Hello all,
This is my first post here. I did some searching and didn't find a direct answer to this scenario, but my apologies if I missed something.
Recently I used my PC to move files from my phone's internal storage onto a microSD card that was mounted in the device. I used the cut & paste function in Windows explorer (didn't occur to me that I could do it on the phone itself), and did this in batches. Unfortunately since that time I've discovered some of the files are corrupted--they have the appropriate size, but can't be opened. Perhaps there is a way to analyze the file structure of the JPEG to see if a byte is missing, but aside from that, I'm interested if I can run TestDisk on the internal phone storage in some way to see if the files could possibly be recovered. I found a few tutorials (example: https://roubert.name/joakim/androidfilerecovery/), but all of them require rooting, and unfortunately my phone is not rooted.
From my review of the procedures on this forum, it seems that unlocking the bootloader and/or rooting ends up requiring that the phone be wiped. Is there any way around this? And does anyone have any other suggestions on investigating whether my photos can be recovered or not?
Thanks for any help!
Lost most likely. Copy the files to the PC. There are more tools available for Windows than Android.
From now on copy/paste, verify size and readability, then delete the source files.
Check Event Viewer during the transfer time to see if errors were reported in Windows. Maybe a bad cable, port, driver issue, etc.
In the future regularly and redundantly backup critical data on at least 2 hdds that are physically and electronically isolated from each other and the PC. I keep all critical data, music, vids, docs, backups go on the SD card and use it as a data drive. Only apps, the DCIM (backed up to the SD card regularly) and download folder go on internal. Then I backup the SD card.
There can only be one folder on Android with the name dcim. So when you backup the images in the internal memory dcim folder to the SD card rename it something like Master Pics to avoid issues.
Think it through and develop a system; everything you need to do a full reload/restore should be on the SD card. Few people utilize the SD card as it should be... it shouldn't be just a random collection of files. It adds an extra layer of protection for your data. Always use a quality V30 rated card like the Sandisk Extreme.
Any chance the photos were backed up to some service online? Google Photos is free and generally present on most Android phones, Samsung has their cloud, and some carriers do as well...
In the future, like @blackhawk said, backups are FAR more important than recovery. ANYTHING important to you should be backed up ("3-2-1" is a good policy to practice). For photos, Google Photos is great because it's free (to a limit, of course) and very easy to use. I've been recommending that to everyone, even iPhone users, because recovery is harder than ever these days - SSDs and flash can fail catastrophically and without warning much more easily than the old spinny drives which usually give some warning.
Sorry there isn't much better news. You may be able to find some un-delete software and try it. There may be paid services as well, but for the most part, it's probably lost...
If you do find something that works, do let us know... always good to find out new options! Good luck.
schwinn8 said:
Any chance the photos were backed up to some service online? Google Photos is free and generally present on most Android phones, Samsung has their cloud, and some carriers do as well...
In the future, like @blackhawk said, backups are FAR more important than recovery. ANYTHING important to you should be backed up ("3-2-1" is a good policy to practice). For photos, Google Photos is great because it's free (to a limit, of course) and very easy to use. I've been recommending that to everyone, even iPhone users, because recovery is harder than ever these days - SSDs and flash can fail catastrophically and without warning much more easily than the old spinny drives which usually give some warning.
Sorry there isn't much better news. You may be able to find some un-delete software and try it. There may be paid services as well, but for the most part, it's probably lost...
If you do find something that works, do let us know... always good to find out new options! Good luck.
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Sadly, no. Didn't use a backup service online. Thanks for the advice though--I used to be pretty good about backing things up routinely, but have gotten lax. Sadly this is the consequence.
DakenSG said:
Sadly, no. Didn't use a backup service online. Thanks for the advice though--I used to be pretty good about backing things up routinely, but have gotten lax. Sadly this is the consequence.
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That's a typically error when using MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) and you shouldn't use it for transferring files whenever it's possible. MTP was developed to offer a wide range compatibility for the most storage devices but it's very buggy and very slow.
Next time you should use the internal file explorer to copy data to your SD. This is the best practice.
Very peculiar issue occurring: there are a fair amount of photos and videos that show up under google photos under library -> photos on device -> camera with SDCard Icon.
But the location for these files is "/external/video/media" or "/external/image/media" under ""On Device (size)." The other files taken in a similar way are correctly on "/storage/9C32-13OC/DCIM/Camera"
When clicking these files, they play normally, clicking share and More or Create Link says "Error, could not download media" and using Google Photos to Move / Copy says "Trouble Moving 1 item"
When ejecting the SDCard and physically removing it while keeping Google Photos open, all the files actually on /storage/<ID> disappear, and all these weird files remain and can be played. This is how I discovered it wasn't just today's videos, which were mysteriously not being uploaded to my nextcloud. No other app can see these videos/images, including the system's gallery app, and they are not in the internal emulated "SDcard"
These are on my SO's phone and I use the exact same model phone. I did discover that I do have some files like these but hey are all older than the oldest file on my SDCard, e.g. Google Photos has somehow decided to cache them. But on my SO's phone, these files are intermingled with the ones she's actually taken
Interestingly when I switch the google photos account to another google user logged on the phone, those files disappear. I did try moving files to the locked folder but it says "Trouble moving to Locked Folder. Try again later"— I did verify I could move files actually on the SDCard there, and they are then removed from all views except Locked Folder.
In this folder, on the top right when clicking the SDCard Icon, it does show the "SD Card folder" as "file:///storage/9C32-13OC/DCIM/Camera" as expected.
I searched for the filename in a file browser as well as in adb shell (using find / -name "filename" 2> /dev/null) and nothing comes up. As there are some lengthy videos in here, I used DiskUsage to see what might be using a lot of space, and the Google Photos app is using 7.55 GB of data, so it seems like they are being stored there. And it makes sense why they can't be found, as /data/data/com.google.android.apps.photos is only accessible by that app or the system, and I'm unrooted.
My SO said she took them the same way she normally takes photos and video, and of course when I take some they show up on the actual SDCard. I suppose in theory I could use adb backup and follow instructions on how to decrypt the data files, but really what the heck is going on?
We aren't on the latest phone or even the latest Google Photos app (could be a bug with this specific version, but then again google photos isn't taking the photos/videos, the system Camera app is). I could try upgrading her google photos but I also don't want to lose these videos of our kid. It does seem like it would back them up, but we don't have enough Google Storage to back them up online (hence why we use nextcloud), and they don't even show up under different google accounts as mentioned.
Phone: LG G7
Android 10
Google Photos: 6.21.0.504361003
robobub said:
EDIT: whoops, can this be moved to https://forum.xda-developers.com/f/android-q-a-help-troubleshooting.1236/ ?
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Done!
Regards
Oswald Boelcke
robobub said:
I suppose in theory I could use adb backup and follow instructions on how to decrypt the data files, but really what the heck is going on?
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Well this didn't work, as google photos does not back up with adb, as some apps can specify this.
Some of these videos did get uploaded to google photos, but they are (now) compressed to under 1/8th their size (the original size is noted correctly in google photos), and from 4k to HD.
From what I had recalled, when they are first uploaded, they are available at their original size to be downloaded. So I tried deleting one to get it to re-upload, and now that video no longer shows up on my SDCard under "/external/video/media" so I basically lost the original HQ video of my kid, great.
Any ideas?