why is android file structure so convoluted?

[Android Central Question]

I'm working on my brother's phone It's a Motorola G Power running android 10 qpms30.80-51-5 patch level of 7/1/2020. I set up a custom ringtone when he first got the phone last month. It's stopped working recently. It's still the default setting but he's just getting chimes. I really don't know what to try next. I had emailed the tone to his address and saved it to ??. I would like to put it in the standard ringtone folder, but I can't find it. There are plenty of folders named ringtones, but none have anything in them. This is very frustrating. I was using file explorer, then switched to solid explorer, but neither is showing me what I need. The new ringtone is there, but SE says it's at /storage/emulated/0/download. I did try rebooting the phone just for grins, but no joy.

TIA
Z.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! The filesystem is based on Linux, which was never intended to be a really intuitive interface. (If you think about it, the Windows filesystem isn't exactly simple either.)

Every Android device should come with directories called /Ringtones, /Notifications, and /Alarms. This is what the typical file manager will show them as (as long as you're using the Explore function of the file manager -- some file managers try to categorize files automatically for you, which I think can lead to more confusion sometimes). These directories are actually subfolders of the /storage/emulated/0/ directory, but that's essentially the user's root directory, which is why that part typically isn't shown.

If you move an appropriate sound file to any of those directories, it should show up as an option in the appropriate sound selection menu. So in your case, download the ringtone file, use a file manager to move it to /Ringtones, and then go to the Settings>Sounds menu to choose your default ringtone -- it should show up there.

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