I download photos on my Lg stylo 4 but when I go to my gallery it says that there's nothing there

[Android Central Question]

I've checked a lot of other things about this and I tried the rescan and I tried shutting my phone off, restarting my phone, clearing cache and data. I even tried downloading from google and then it goes to my downloads and I send that to my google photos then I send that to my device (it used to go into my gallery when I did this) but now it just goes straight back to my downloads. This all happened suddenly too, just a few hours before I was able to download photos fine. I'm kinda getting upset and angry at this point ( Like is there any solution on how to fix this?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Where exactly are you downloading the photos from, and which app are you using to download them?

 

[dprislive]

I downloaded it off of tumblr (where ive been downloading my photos from for years without any problems) and I even tried snapchat, messenger, and even tryied to restore my locked and trashed photos and it still says theres nothing there when I go back to the gallery

 

[B. Diddy]

Using a file manager app, can you locate the directory where those photo files are downloading to? If so, check to see if there's a file called .nomedia in that same directory. If so, delete that file, then see if the photos start showing up in your Gallery app again.

 

[dprislive]

Using a file manager app, can you locate the directory where those photo files are downloading to? If so, check to see if there's a file called .nomedia in that same directory. If so, delete that file, then see if the photos start showing up in your Gallery app again.

I deleted the .nomedia files but my photos still aren't back. I can see where I downloaded them over and over again in the file manager because I thought that they were just not going thorough, I just cant see them in my gallery still

 

[B. Diddy]

Are the directories on Internal Storage or the SD card?

If you're using the Google Photos app, tap the Menu button and tap Device Folders. Do you see the photos there?

 

[dprislive]

Are the directories on Internal Storage or the SD card?

If you're using the Google Photos app, tap the Menu button and tap Device Folders. Do you see the photos there?

I have no idea what you mean by the first part, but I can see them on google photos

 

[dprislive]

Okay so I went back to download more photos bc obviously not seeing my photos isnt going to stop me from downloading them and i downloaded like 5 things and I can see my gallery now again!

 

[B. Diddy]

Ok good! What I had meant by the first part was what part of storage the images were being saved to -- the phone's own storage memory or an external SD card.

 

[Rukbat]

Restart the phone.

Short lesson. When the phone starts or restarts, Media Scan runs and picks up all media files - pictures, sound, video - and creates a database of them. All media apps look in that database to find files they can handle. (The only other choice is that every time you open a media app it has to scan the entire phone's storage.)

Taking a picture or making a sound recording triggers Media Scan to add that file to the database. Downloading files doesn't trigger it. (A .nomedia file in a folder makes it skip the entire folder and all folders in it.)

So you can download a picture 100 times and Gallery, looking in the database, won't see it. But apps like Snapchat and Tumbler are aware of their own files, and file managers look wherever you tell them to look.