Why are pics of my lock & home screen being saved in my Gallery and how do I stop it?

JenC419

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Aug 24, 2018
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Hi! I have a Samsung Galaxy S6 and recently I have been finding pics of my lock screen and home screen in my Gallery. I don't mean the pics that I set to use as backgrounds. The pics have a black background and show the time and icons. This happens daily. I don't know why this is happening and is there a way to stop it?
 

Rukbat

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First, nothing is being "saved in your Gallery". Gallery isn't a location, it's an app, and you can't save pictures to an app, only to a storage location.

Second, Gallery shows all pictures on the phone, unless the name of the picture file stats with a dot (which means "hidden" in Linux, which is the OS that Android runs on), it's in a folder with a dot at the beginning of the name, or there's a file in the folder named .nomedia, which stops the search as soon as it's seen.

When you turn the phone on or restart it, Media Scan runs and finds all the media files - pictures, videos, music, podcasts - and builds a database of them - names, locations and types. Gallery just looks in there for pictures and videos and displays them. (Media Scan doesn't list hidden files, doesn't look in hidden folders and stops looking in a folder if there's a .nomedia file in it.)

As FreezerMoosh asked, if you made a screenshot of the homescreen, Media Scan will list it. (I don't know if you can make a screenshot of the lock screen - My phone is never locked at home.)
 

JenC419

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Aug 24, 2018
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First, nothing is being "saved in your Gallery". Gallery isn't a location, it's an app, and you can't save pictures to an app, only to a storage location.

Second, Gallery shows all pictures on the phone, unless the name of the picture file stats with a dot (which means "hidden" in Linux, which is the OS that Android runs on), it's in a folder with a dot at the beginning of the name, or there's a file in the folder named .nomedia, which stops the search as soon as it's seen.

When you turn the phone on or restart it, Media Scan runs and finds all the media files - pictures, videos, music, podcasts - and builds a database of them - names, locations and types. Gallery just looks in there for pictures and videos and displays them. (Media Scan doesn't list hidden files, doesn't look in hidden folders and stops looking in a folder if there's a .nomedia file in it.)

As FreezerMoosh asked, if you made a screenshot of the homescreen, Media Scan will list it. (I don't know if you can make a screenshot of the lock screen - My phone is never locked at home.)

I've obviously been having a "duh" moment. To make a long story short I had "show hidden files" turned on. However, I'm still confused as to why the phone would store those images. Is it for backup and restore?