How do I put photos onto my desktop (home screen)...

[Alan Wolf1]

I have photos which are either emailed to me, or photos that I've taken with my phone's camera, etc.
I want to put them (or shortcuts to them) in a folder on my home screen.
I've created the folder, but can't seem to move photos into it.
If I long press on a photo, or press "Share" I have all sorts of options -- but none of them will put the photo, or its shortcut, in an arbitrary folder.
I have ES File Explorer, and can sometimes find the photos (they can originate in diverse places) and that should allow transfer of the jpegs to that desktop folder, but I don't know how to navigate to the desktop folder.
There has to be a better way...
Thanks.

aw

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! With file explorer apps like ES, you can typically place a shortcut on a homescreen to a specific folder--tapping on that shortcut would then open ES File Explorer to the contents of that folder.

What you should try is to create a folder (let's call it "Pictures") on the root directory of either your Internal Storage or your External SD card using ES File Explorer. Then, find the photos you're interested in and copy or move them to that folder. Photos taken with the camera should be in /storage/sdcard0/DCIM/Camera if they've been saved to internal storage, or /storage/sdcard1/DCIM/Camera if saved to external SD. If you have Android 4.2 or 4.3, I think the directories may be /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/Camera and /storage/emulated/1/DCIM/Camera.

If you downloaded pictures from the web, they should be in your Downloads folder. The directory for that is either /storage/sdcard0/Download or /storage/emulated/0/Download.

The next step is to make a shortcut for that Pictures folder on your homescreen. I don't have ES File Explorer, so I don't know the exact procedure. But I would guess that there are 2 ways to do it:
(1) In ES File Explorer, select the Pictures folder (either by long-pressing it or highlighting it and pressing the menu button), and see if there is an option to place a shortcut on the homescreen.
(2) Go to your homescreen, then open the App Drawer (i.e., your whole app list), navigate to Widgets, and see if there is a widget called "Folder" or "ES File Explorer." Selecting it will probably open File Explorer, and prompt you to select a folder that you want to place on the homescreen.

If you're successful and you have a shortcut on the homescreen to that folder, keep in mind that it probably won't open up a quick window showing your photos--it will likely open up ES File Explorer right to that folder. From there, you could select and open a photo.

 

[STSVA]

Perhaps something like this app to create shortcuts would simplify things for you - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nagopy.file.shortcut&hl=en I just tried it and it works. Find the image using Gallery or another image viewing app, select "share," choose File Shortcut from the share options, then create the shortcut. On my phone, the image shortcut was created in an open space on the page next to the File Shortcut app icon. I then dragged the image shortcut to the Pictures folder I created on a different page and then I had my picture shortcut in the folder. When I click on the shortcut, it asks which image app I want to use to open it. Once I select the viewing app, the image can be viewed. The only weakness in doing it this way is that you need open space on a page to create the shortcut and drag the shortcut into the picture folder. It might be easiest to add a blank page and do everything there.

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

B. Diddy's advice is sound, but I think the OP's confusion is that the "folder" you created on the desktop is probably just an app shortcut group, and not an actual "folder" view-able via the file system.

As B. Diddy stated, you'll want to use file manager to create an actual folder in either your internal storage or SD card, then move the pics into that.

 

[HPferoxCraft]

Hmm I might be missing the point of this completely but I use Quickpic. I added only the camera folder and the folders that I download the pics from email and see to.

Posted using the AC app

 

[edipo-s]

STSVA's method is very simple and foolproof.
Once you have the app, there is only one step and you are done!

 

[sthubbar]

STSVA's method is very simple and foolproof.
Once you have the app, there is only one step and you are done!

Agreed and thanks to everyone.

 

[matttys1]

Also agreed.

This was my problem as well, with this forum thread rising to the top of the googlez ranks, so I clicked. Being just sufficiently techie to be dangerous, STSVA's app advice seemed to be the simplest, most efficient and least dangerous way to approach this. So I did.

And while there's a small learning curve to the app (very small, really), it worked like a dream - quick, easy and solid. Thanks STSVA!

 

[timmo]

Save image to Google Drive / Click on the file in Drive app / Add to home screen

Worked perfectly for me to save a screenshot shortcut link on my home screen (I even set the file in Google Drive to work offline so it's even faster in opening it)

 

[stic2]

I used to be able to just drag a photo to a screen, very easy to use for bar code reader etc...now, with this godawful Nougat, I can't...

How do I get this function back?