Phone says it downloads pictures but they never show up

[Sitara Dhawan]

Hi guys,

A couple of days ago I downloaded a bunch of images to my phone through Google images using the chrome browser. However, now that I need to look at them, they don't show up anywhere.

When I download an image now, I get a push notification saying my download succeeded, and I can open the image from there. But the images never show up in my gallery or files apps, and when I connect my phone to my PC I don't see the images anywhere either... I can search for the file names but that gives no result, as if they don't exist. But they have to be on my phone somewhere?! Since you can open them through the push notif (only once since the notif disappears after...)

I have a Huawei P20, which doesn't use an sd card, only internal storage. Everything was working just fine a couple weeks ago. I already tried forcing media rescans but they don't work... I tried looking at the download location by opening an image through the push notification but all it allows me to do is edit the image, not look at any stats. I also tried using third party apps instead of the stock ones but they don't show the images either. Would really appreciate some help!

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! You already mentioned that you're using Chrome to download, but I just want to be certain about that -- you're starting off by opening Chrome, then typing google.com in the URL bar, then searching for the image? Or are you opening the Google search app first, searching for the image there, and then downloading the image? I ask this because if you start from the Google search app, then any image you download gets saved to a protected system directory called /document, and these images don't show up in the Gallery -- they only show up when you open the Google app and go to the Saved area. If you start off in Chrome instead, the images go to the /Download directory and do show up in the Gallery. I'm not sure why they do it that way.

 

[Sitara Dhawan]

Welcome to Android Central! You already mentioned that you're using Chrome to download, but I just want to be certain about that -- you're starting off by opening Chrome, then typing google.com in the URL bar, then searching for the image? Or are you opening the Google search app first, searching for the image there, and then downloading the image? I ask this because if you start from the Google search app, then any image you download gets saved to a protected system directory called /document, and these images don't show up in the Gallery -- they only show up when you open the Google app and go to the Saved area. If you start off in Chrome instead, the images go to the /Download directory and do show up in the Gallery. I'm not sure why they do it that way.

Sorry for the late reply, the reply buttons on this forum don't show up on mobile for some reason. You know what, I think you're right! I'm pretty sure I used the search widget on my phone instead of the actual browser. The images don't show up under saved however, it only shows saved pages and saved (i think they should call this function something like favourite instead of save... bit confusing) images, not actual downloaded images. Do you maybe know how to access this protected directory? I don't see it anywhere myself.

 

[B. Diddy]

I don't think there's a way to access that protected directory, unless you root the device. Can you just download the images again, this time using Chrome?

 

[B. Diddy]

Actually, I just learned this solution from RocThrower: https://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=884746&p=6324010&viewfull=1#post6324010. All you have to do is turn on Storage permission for the Google app!