Why is my music's album artwork showing up in my photo library? How do I remove it?

[HotWingsFTW]

This has been happening for a few years now, but I'm only now getting around to trying to fix it. In my Google Photos app, when I go to the Library tab, it's flooded with album artwork from the music files I have synced to my phone. Why in the world would I want to view this in my photo library and create unnecessary clutter that prevents me from finding what I'm actually looking for? This makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Anyway, does anyone know how to fix this? How do I get Google Photos to stop picking up album artwork?

 

[SpookDroid]

Are these pictures showing up just 'locally' or do they show up also in the web version (i.e. cloud backup)? If the latter, you need to disable sync for that specific album on your phone. If the files show up locally, that's pretty much the default behavior of Photos (but those shouldn't be backed up to your cloud account). To prevent this, you should copy a "nomedia" file to the folder where the artwork is being stored so the system doesn't display the media found in that folder.

Find a NOMEDIA File on Your Android? Here's What They're For

A NOMEDIA file is an Android No Media file used to prevent apps from displaying multimedia files. Here's more on this format and how to deal with them.

www.lifewire.com

 

[HotWingsFTW]

Are these pictures showing up just 'locally' or do they show up also in the web version (i.e. cloud backup)? If the latter, you need to disable sync for that specific album on your phone. If the files show up locally, that's pretty much the default behavior of Photos (but those shouldn't be backed up to your cloud account). To prevent this, you should copy a "nomedia" file to the folder where the artwork is being stored so the system doesn't display the media found in that folder.

Find a NOMEDIA File on Your Android? Here's What They're For

A NOMEDIA file is an Android No Media file used to prevent apps from displaying multimedia files. Here's more on this format and how to deal with them.

www.lifewire.com

Thanks for the reply.

They're only local and they aren't being synced.

The good news is the .nomedia file does its job...if I put the file specifically in that artist's subfolder in my main Music folder on the root of my device.

The bad news is I have 547 artist subfolders, and I would have to copy and paste this thing into every single one to remove the artwork, not to mention this would need to be done at regular intervals as I continue to add music to my library. Needless to say, that would be utterly ridiculous and an extremely manual, time-consuming process. I tried putting the .nomedia file in the general Music folder where the subfolders are stored, but of course that didn't work because that would have been far too convenient and efficient.

Is there really no other solution? I can't imagine in 2024 that there isn't a better way to resolve such a simple issue (and please don't say "just use a different gallery/photo app").

 

[HotWingsFTW]

I think I've found a workaround.

Since Android won't recognize a .nomedia file in the Music folder itself, I created a subfolder in the Music folder and just copy/pasted all the artist subfolders into this new subfolder. I then put a .nomedia file into this new subfolder and now, POOF: no more album artwork in Google Photos. Only part left now is to tell my music manager on Windows (what I use to sync music in the first place) to put any new music into this new subfolder, and I should be golden.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Village_Idiot]

You are going to have to delete them. Every time I copy my music over to a new device the album art goes with it. It's kind of a PITA.

 

[SpookDroid]

Don't take this the wrong way, but nowadays the artwork should be embedded in the music file itself... apps that still rely on actual thumbnails and custom files without the proper coding to include the 'nomedia' descriptor in its subfolders is just outdated programming.

 

[Village_Idiot]

Don't take this the wrong way, but nowadays the artwork should be embedded in the music file itself... apps that still rely on actual thumbnails and custom files without the proper coding to include the 'nomedia' descriptor in its subfolders is just outdated programming.

Yes and no. The albumart.jpg files are usually created by apps like iTunes or any app that connects to a server to pull down the cover art when tagging the music files. Like I said, it is a bit of a PITA everytime I copy music over to a new device.

Most modern music apps like Samsung Music can show pull the album art without creating separate jpeg files.