All camera photos disappeared?

[CKwik240]

Just noticed while going through my gallery that all the photos I took with my camera disappeared. The oldest one was one I took on the 6-14. Even those that I had on my SD card are gone. Most are backed up with Google photos, but it's disconcerting that they are just gone. Anyone ever see anything like this?

 

[Rukbat]

Have you tried restarting the phone? (What you see in Gallery is what's in the Media Scan database. If the database gets corrupted, you won't see things that are still on the phone. Media Scan only works during start [first start or restart] or when you force it with a media rescan app. Why? So an app like Gallery or a music or video player doesn't have to scan the entire phone every time you run it.)

If they're really not there (use MyFiles to look in sdcard (or emulated/0) for DCIM. Look in there for Camera. See what pictures are in there. If they're really missing, go to Google Photos, download them and move them to /DCIM/Camera.

 

[CKwik240]

I did. Still not there. I'm not concerned about restoring the files on my phone. They are backed up on Google photos and I have that app readily available, so I can just look there. Just wondering why they disappeared.

 

[B. Diddy]

Do you have any 3rd party "phone cleaner" apps installed that might be set to automatically clear out media files? Or is it possible you might have tapped the Free Up Space option in the Google Photos settings menu?

 

[CKwik240]

No cleaner apps. Definitely didn't use the free up space feature... At least not intentionally. It deleted photos on both my SD card and internal memory. But only from the dcim folder. It kept all photos that were saved in app folders.

 

[B. Diddy]

I'm glad that you were smart and had Google Photos backup turned on. I can't explain why the locally saved copies of the photos were deleted, though. My best guess is that the Free Up Space option was accidentally activated somehow (or it glitched) -- is it possible that someone else might have been using your phone and did this?

Let us know if it happens again in the future.