No pop up window when one should appear

[Android Central Question]

First of all, i'm completely newbie when it comes to android phone and it's OS but for the least i know some of the basics so please forgive me if there's certain term i use is wrong.

few days ago, my phone suddenly unable to open any "shortcut" related to file manager.
for example in Whatsapp, I'm trying to open the file explorer to upload a picture, but when i choose an action like open using galery, explorer, etc, nothing happened.
this prevents me from upload literally anything through app because i'm unable to open the file explorer but i can still open any file manager or explorer just fine.

another issue is when i downloaded an archived file or picture. when i tap the downloaded file, nothing happened. the picture is properly saved to my phone and usually when i tap a downloaded file like picture, it should be opened right away.

the phone is Xiaomi Redmi 4A
it's old, but i never mess anything with it's OS or ROM. also never updated it's OS, unless it's updated automatically without me knowing.

Anyone know what's the issue and solution?
i'd prefer trying any possible way to fix this first before attempting a hard reset or flashing the phone.

thank you in advance.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Go to Settings>Apps, select WhatsApp, then Defaults, and clear the defaults. Now see if it asks you to select a method to share a picture. If that doesn't work, then try going to Settings>Apps, tap Menu, then Reset All App Preferences.

Which app are you using to download the file or image? What directory is it going to?

 

[0070]

Thank you for the answer. Resetting the app preferences solved some of the issue but i can't still open file explorer when an app asking me to.
Almost every app. the Phone's built in browser or 3rd party browser give me same result. I'm not sure which directory it goes, but normally the internal storage is what shown to me first. to give you a better idea, yesterday when i tried to change my profile picture in Whatsapp, it asked me an action to choose which one I'm gonna use (Galery, File manager, etc), and when I choose one, nothing happened. I've tried all the possible option, but none of those work.

 

[B. Diddy]

Does this also happen in Safe Mode? https://www.getdroidtips.com/boot-xiaomi-redmi-4a-into-mode/. You won't be able to test apps that weren't preinstalled, but you should still be able to test the Share function on the preinstalled apps.