Why wont my pictures load in other apps?

[clxudyjay]

I jusy recently used this app called ccleaner on the play store to clean stuff up, now im unable to see my pictures in other apps besides my gallery. Help please??

 

[B. Diddy]

Which phone? Were these pictures you took with the phone's camera, or pictures that were downloaded from the web or using other apps? Is the phone set to backup photos automatically to Google Photos, Samsung Cloud, or some other cloud service?

 

[clxudyjay]

it happens to be a mixture of pictures, the phone is a samsung a5 (2017) Yes, the photos are set to be automatically backed up, although, i cannot view them on insstagram, they would only appear as boxes.

 

[clxudyjay]

here is a picture

 

[B. Diddy]

Using a file manager app, check the phone's directories to see if the actual image files are still present. It may be that CCleaner deleted the local copies, and you're seeing the cloud copies that only the gallery app can show.

 

[clxudyjay]

do you have any suggestions for any "file manager" apps?

 

[ManiacJoe]

Your phone should come with a "my files" app or "file manager" or something like that.

If you want to try a third party file browser, I like x-plore by Lonely Cat Games:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lonelycatgames.Xplore

 

[B. Diddy]

Files by Google is worth trying. I personally like Total Commander, which is free and ad-free.

 

[clxudyjay]

how do i check the phone's directories?

 

[B. Diddy]

Use the file manager app to explore the directories. A file manager app works like Windows Explorer on a PC. Use the app to look in the directories where the image files would be (which depends on where they're from). Photos taken by the Camera app would be in /DCIM/Camera. Images downloaded by apps like Facebook are usually in a subdirectory of the /Pictures directory (so for example, images from Facebook would be in /Pictures/Facebook). Images you downloaded from the web using your browser are usually in the /Download directory.

The problem with using phone cleaner apps like CCleaner is that when you "clean" the phone, the cleaner app will often include the /Download directory, since the user isn't really meant to keep files in that directory indefinitely. If you download an image from the web, it's a good idea to move that image file from the /Download directory to some other directory, like /Pictures.

 

[clxudyjay]

sorry- but how do i move pictures into /pictures? im a bit confused on what I have to do to recover my pictures.

 

[B. Diddy]

First things first -- which file manager are you using? Try to use Files by Google or Total Commander if you want exact steps, because those are the ones I'm familiar with.

Second -- have you located the image files you want to move to /Pictures? What's the directory pathname?

 

[clxudyjay]

total commander is what im using

 

[B. Diddy]

1. Find one of the images you want to move and tap the little thumbnail to the left of the filename -- you should see a checkmark appear on it.
2. Tap the little document icon at the bottom (2nd from the left).
3. Tap the double arrow to the right of the pathname that shows up in the window.
4. Tap the Home icon on the next screen.
5. Tap Internal Shared Storage, then the Pictures folder.
6. Tap OK.
7. Tap Copy or Move.

 

[Rukbat]

Total Commander has another nice little trick. Put the phone into landscape (horizontal) and you'll get 2 Total Commander windows. Find the file in the left window. Find the /pictures folder in the right window and go into it. Now go back to the left window, select the files you want to move, long-press one of them and drag it to the right window. They'll all get moved. (As long as you're "moving" from the same medium to that medium [like internal user space to internal user space], all that gets "moved" is the directory entries, so the "move blew up in the middle and I lost everything" problem doesn't occur. If you're moving files from internal to external, or external to internal, don't move them, copy them. Then if something goes wrong, you still have the originals. Once you check that the copies are okay, delete the originals.)