Name of folders on the phone. Where are images stored on Android?

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Increasingly, photographs are stored on the phone. On the one hand, it's convenient. However, over time, it becomes more and more difficult to restore order; in addition, it is not clear where exactly the images are stored. The worst thing is that entire photo albums disappear this way. We will help you cope with this hell and answer basic questions.

Where are images stored on Android?

Photos taken with the Camera (standard Android app), are stored on the memory card or internal memory of the phone - depending on the application settings.

The location of the photos is always the same - the DCIM\Camera folder. The full path looks like this:

/storage/emmc/DCIM - if in phone memory
/storage/sdcard0/DCIM - if on a memory card

How to quickly go to these folders on Android? Install any (for example, ES Explorer or Total Commander) – the built-in tools of the mobile OS are inconvenient to navigate and limited in operations with files.

Why DCIM?

The abbreviation DCIM stands for Digital Camera Images. For digital cameras such a name is a kind of standard.

and iOS Android devices support the DCF specification, within which the name DCIM was adopted. Therefore, desktop and mobile applications open this folder without any problems.

Where are Screenshots stored?

Screenshots taken in the usual way(via hardware buttons) are saved in the Pictures/Screenshot folder. If you have installed, go to settings and check the path where you save the images.

What is the thumbnails folder for?

In this folder, according to its name, thumbnails are stored - a smaller version of photographs, downloaded images (for example, from Whatsapp or Skype). A smaller copy helps the smartphone quickly open an image from the Gallery.

Where are thumbnails stored?

Thumbnail files are stored inside the DCIM folder:

/storage/emmc/DCIM/.thumbnails (if only used inner memory)
/storage/sdcard0/DCIM/.thumbnails (if an SD card is inserted into the phone)

How to delete thumbnail cache?

Often, thumbnail files “eat up” too much space on the phone: the count goes into gigabytes. It is useful, and sometimes necessary, to empty the contents of the thumbnails folder. In this case you have nothing to lose, necessary files will be recreated as needed.

There are two ways to clear thumbnail files.

Method 1(manually):

Install on Android file manager
Enable viewing hidden files on your phone
Go to the thumbnails folder
Delete its contents by selecting all files

Method 2(automatically):

Download and install
Go to the “Clear cache” and memory section and click “Analyze”
In the results, select the “Thumbnail Cache” checkbox and click “Clear”

The dcim folder is empty - what should I do?

This problem occurs when you connect your phone to a PC via a USB cable. There is nothing in the dcim folder, but the photos are still displayed through the Gallery.

You need to check both locations - on the memory card and in the memory of the Android device (you may need to transfer files from one DCIM folder to another).
Next, delete the cache from the External Storage and Media Storage application.

Settings -> Applications -> Three dot menu
Show system applications-> External Storage and Media storage
Delete data and cache
Reboot your phone

Questions and answers

I accidentally deleted photos from my Camera folder. In the internal storage, I was deleting unnecessary items to free up space and accidentally selected DCIM to erase. Can I recover a photo? This happened 5 days ago. I checked the Trash folder in the Gallery, but it shows files that won't open.

Answer. Thumbnails from the DCIM folder can be restored even without root, but to obtain the original photos it is necessary. We have already talked about similar cases, study the cases of other users.

Help me recover files on my phone. When connected to a computer, the photos in the DCIM folder (internal memory) were not visible, although the photos were viewed on the phone. I wanted to download them to my computer. As a result, she created something incomprehensible. Now in this folder all the photos are in the form of gray squares with an exclamation mark. When I try to open it, the cursor freezes and spins, and then writes that this format not supported. I somehow merged two DCIM folders and replaced them. As a result, space was freed up in the phone's internal memory. Is it possible in this case to revive photos and videos from this folder and if so, how?

On my smartphone samsung galaxy j5, photos and videos are missing. I'm looking in my files, there's nothing in the DCIM folder, but the memory is busy. Comes Android notification that you need to free up memory. What to do?

I transferred photos from my phone to a memory card, but they disappeared there, instead there was a triangle with an exclamation mark... I found them (on your advice) in DCIM camera, but the quality leaves much to be desired (no clarity at all!).

I moved photos from phone memory to SD card. The operation was performed through desktop computer by connecting a device to it via a USB port. There is access to the Android Gallery, photos are in the DCIM/Camera folder. But there is no access to photos and videos from Viber and WhatsApp.

Contrary to the opinion of some users, not all smartphone owners understand at least something about the Android operating system. Often they don't even know basic things. If you also feel like such a “teapot,” then our material was written just for you! In today's article we will talk about how to create a folder on Android. This allows you to group several applications at once, making it easier to navigate across your desktops.

When is this required?

Of course, not everyone needs to create folders. If you only install something on your smartphone from time to time, then you can easily do without folders. Their creation is necessary if your device has accumulated a lot of big number applications that you use regularly. You can group shortcuts by program type. For example, one folder will contain games, while another will consist of antivirus and various system utilities.

We must not forget that in Lately Smartphones, which have nothing besides desktops, have become increasingly widespread. That is, in such devices there is no separate menu, containing shortcuts to all applications. Now imagine a situation where seven or eight dozen programs and games are installed on such a device. All their shortcuts will be located on desktops. Without the function of combining into folders, this would greatly complicate navigation - sometimes you would have to search for the desired application for several tens of seconds or even more! Luckily, creating a folder on your desktop isn't too difficult.

Creating a folder

Some manufacturers implement multiple ways to create a folder. But most often, users prefer to create a folder on their phone using the following method:

Step 1. Decide in advance which two applications you want to combine into one folder.

Step 2: Hold your finger on the first program shortcut.

Step 3: Now drag this shortcut over the second app's shortcut until a black circle or some other folder creation symbol appears.

Step 4: Release your finger. In most cases, the system will then prompt you to give the folder a name. Sometimes you can do without this - then you can assign a name at any other time.

Step 5: You can later add other applications to the folder. To do this, simply drag the program icon onto the folder image.

Note: Recently, many manufacturers allow you to create folders not only on the desktop, but also in the menu. In particular, this is possible on devices from some other companies.

It should be noted that this function appeared in the operating room Android system not right away. If your device is very old, it may not be able to create folders. For example, such a function is not present in Android 1.6 and even some subsequent versions of the operating system.

If you analyze the disk space on your Android device, you may be surprised to find that photos take up several gigabytes more than they actually do. How is this possible and what needs to be done to free up memory?

The problem is the collection of thumbnail files on your device that are stored in Thumbnails folder.

The thing is, for each image file that is stored on the device, Android OS creates a thumbnail so that they load faster in the gallery when you open it for viewing. Third Party Applications, such as WhatsApp and Viber can also create their own thumbnails when they scan image files. Typically the folder where these thumbnails are stored is called Thumbnails.

In order to get rid of unnecessary files, you need to do the following:

1. Open the file manager on Android or connect it to your PC.

2. Make sure your file manager can show hidden files and create new ones. Otherwise, it is better to use standard Windows Explorer after connecting the device to the PC.

3. Navigate to SDCard\DCIM\.thumbnails. By the way, DCIM is a standard name for a folder that contains photos and is standard for almost any device, be it a smartphone or a camera.

4. Select and delete the .thumbnails folder, it can occupy up to several gigabytes.

Once you do this, you won't notice much of a difference in the speed at which you view images in your gallery.

Since .thumbnails is a system file, Android recreates it again. Moreover, you may find multiple copies of the same file in the .thumbnails folder if you reinstalled Android.

To prevent Android from creating the bulky folder again, we need to create a dummy file that tricks Android. To do this, we create a text file in the DCIM folder. You need to name this file thumbnails, and then give it the “Read Only” attribute in Properties. After this, you need to erase the txt extension. As a result of all these actions, you should be left with an empty and undefined file without an extension.

This dummy file will now prevent Android from creating great amount useless files. You now have free place in memory, which you can use to your advantage.

Again I return to operating system Android and its “features”. These unpleasant features popping up at the most inopportune times. You know this yourself. But has it ever happened to you that applications did not want to be installed on your phone or, suddenly, the memory turned out to be full of something completely incomprehensible? Have you heard anything about sketch files? No?

In my case of a sudden lack of space for installing applications and incomprehensible errors, I blame the mechanism for creating thumbnail files. I couldn't install it several times. required applications due to the fact that an error occurred during installation or the application refused to install due to the small amount on the disk. And I also didn't take many interesting shots. Unfortunately, some advice from the Internet for solving this problem is contradictory or does not work at all.

It is clear that this angered me. Below the cut I will tell you how I looked for the memory eater and got rid of it. Initial reference data:

Photo archive of the Camera application is located on the phone by default at /mnt/sdcard/DCIM/ (you can save phone memory by installing applications and storing photos on a memory card. I wrote how to do this in a post about basic questions about Android - “ “) .

The Camera app thumbnail files are located on your phone at /mnt/sdcard/DCIM/.thumbnails/

I did not set up superuser (root) rights (with root everything is done in two seconds - access rights are changed right in the phone), but I installed two applications and connected the phone to the computer once.

Attention! Next are 3 ways. You can skim everything. They work correctly on all devices for me. On Android 6.0.1, the .thumbnails folder is deleted and space is freed up (see bottom of post). The third method is simpler.

Preparation. First I installed Android Assistant and Total Commander app. Launched Android Assistant. On the “Toolkit” tab, I selected “Clean up the system”. In the line “Sketch files” I indicated a volume of 778.93 MB. Not weak, right? Pressing Exclamation point in the triangle I saw the contents of the folder (copies of photos from the gallery) and the file directory. Here you can delete them selectively by checking the box next to each file, or by checking the “Sketch files” box, you can clear the entire sketch folder at once. This help is temporary. After viewing the gallery, shooting, installing applications, the folder will be filled with files again.

Method 1. Next, I connected the phone to the computer (two new drives appeared in Explorer: the internal memory of the phone and the memory card installed in the phone) and found the DCIM folder in the root of the first drive of the phone - path Sdcard/DCIM/ (DCIM folders store photos and videos from the phone camera ). There is also a .thumbnails folder in the DCIM folder in which these very sketches are stored, which so suddenly interfere with my life. In addition to the photos, the .thumbnails folder also contained the .thumbdata4-1967290299 file (you will have different numbers). Here's what it looked like:

First I deleted the .thumbnails folder.

Instead of the .thumbnails folder, I created an empty one text file, which was renamed to thumbnails for which it was set to “Read Only” in the properties.

Why did I create a thumbnails file? The point is that I will make a file of the same name in the .thumbnails folder with a zero size, but I will forbid anyone to write anything into it. Why didn't I put a period before thumbnails? Because the Windows operating system does not allow you to work with files whose names begin with a dot. From her point of view, such a file does not have a name, but only the extension .thumbnails. Android, like its ancestors Linux and Unix, perfectly tolerates the period at the beginning of the name and considers such a file hidden. I got distracted. In short, don’t put an end to it, but in the file properties, specify the “Read-Only” attributes. Now no one can write anything to this file.

Then I disconnected the phone from the computer, otherwise I would not have access to the DCIM folder from the phone. Now I launched Total Commander on the phone and went to the SD card and there into the DCIM folder, and in it I found the thumbnails. A slightly longer press on the thumbnails line brought up the context menu, where I selected “Rename”.

I took photos, surfed the Internet, installed applications, but the .thumbnails folder no longer appeared, which is what I wish for you. Good luck and take care of your memory.

Method 2.

Hello! The topic turned out to be very popular, but questions remain. Therefore, I suggest trying the second option for deleting the folder of sketch files - without a computer. I think that you have read the material above and I will not dwell on the details.

From the Google Play Store I installed it on my smartphone and

1. Opened ES Explorer and went to the folder at /mnt/sdcard/DCIM (the path in my case). Created a thumbnails file (without the dot).

2. Launched Total Commander, went to the address /mnt/sdcard/DCIM, there are folders there: 100ANDRO, Сamera, .thumbnails and the newly created thumbnails file. I deleted the .thumbnails folder, then renamed the thumbnails file (added a dot).

I took a photo and made a video, but the folder did not appear.

Method 3.

I launch Total Commander, go to the address /storage/sdcard0/DCIM, there are active folders Camera applications: 100ANDRO, Сamera, .thumbnails. Deleted the .thumbnails folder. With a long tap (long press) on the Camera folder, I called up a menu where there was a “New text file” item, selected it and created a .thumbnails file.

This is what came out. The result is similar to the previous ones - thumbnails are not created, memory does not suddenly run out.

Popular questions on the topic and answers to them:

Is /mnt/sdcard/DCIM the only path to store photos?

No, each disk can have its own path sdcard, sdcard2 And so on. The active one is the one designated in the settings as the “default recording disk”. You can check by taking a photo and seeing in which folder /mnt/sdcard/DCIM or mnt/sdcard2/DCIM it ended up. There will be an active file of thumbnails.thumbnails. The path can also be written as storage/sdcard0/DCIM or storage/sdcard1/DCIM

UPD. 6/11/2016 In the comments to this post, readers write that on devices with Android 6, deleting the .thumbnails folder does not free up space. I have one hypothesis about this. I’ll say right away that on my Android 6.0.1 the folder is deleted and space is freed up. Just checked. So, I deleted everything and looked at the free space through Total Commander. I suspect that if you delete a folder through ES Explorer, you will not notice an increase in free space. Why? Because the ES File Explorer app has its own trash bin where it moves files but doesn't delete them. To permanently delete, you need to empty the trash. I wrote about this in a post.

I don’t see any point in providing screenshots, but I have on Android 6.0.1 the .thumbnails folder is deleted and space is freed up. I suggest continuing the discussion in the comments.

Save it as a memory, share with friends and leave comments.

Today, probably everyone knows about the Android operating system. Almost everyone has a smartphone or tablet based on this OS, so the basic principles of Android are familiar to most modern users.

However, Google's OS is not as obvious as Windows and hides a lot in its depths. various settings and functions that give us certain additional conveniences. Such Android secrets will be discussed below.

I would like to immediately warn everyone reading this article. Some secrets may already be familiar to you, so don’t rush to write in the comments something like: “I already knew that!” It’s better to write about what is not written about in the article. This way you can add to it and earn gratitude (at least in words) from other readers;)

Preliminary preparation

If Windows was originally designed for working with files, then Android is a system more focused on working on the Internet. This affects the pre-installed set of applications, among which there are often none the right tools. Therefore, I recommend immediately expanding the functionality of your device by installing the necessary ones.

And in first place I would put a normal file manager:

I would recommend the application, however, you can use any other that you find on Google Play. For example, good dispatchers Root files Explorer, Total Commander (I used it myself at first), ES File Explorer, etc.

File managers will allow you to conveniently create files and folders on the device’s memory card, as well as partially view the contents of the root folder even without root rights and between the PC and the device via Wi-Fi.

However, there is one sad nuance. Starting approximately with version 4.4.4 Android began hashing (encrypting) passwords in configuration file, so in new devices it’s simple text editor decryption is no longer possible. Alas, I haven’t come across any applications that allow me to decrypt this hash, so if you know one, be sure to write in the comments and we’ll add a link to it.

The most famous Easter egg

Finally, I would like to recall the rather famous “”, which many have heard about, but perhaps not everyone knows how to get to it. This is about hidden pictures, which are available in every version of Android.

To see this picture, you need to go to “Settings” - “Phone information” (or “About device”), find the “Android version” item there with the version number and quickly click on this item seven to ten times:

In some versions, pictures can also be interactive. If you press them several times in a row, some action may occur. For example, on Android Jelly Bean (4.1.x - 4.3.x) an image of a jelly bean appears, clicking on it causes it to fly into many smaller beans, which can be dragged around the screen and scattered in different directions :)

And this is what the Easter egg looks like: Android KitKat(thanks to our regular reader Yuri for the video provided):

Results

In fact hidden possibilities There is much more to Android than we described in the article. Using special decompilers, you can, for example, literally disassemble the entire system interface “bone by bone” and “make” something of your own from it. The only problem is that all more or less serious actions require root rights and an understanding of what you want to achieve.

In the article, I selected only those tricks that almost all users can perform (except for the “trick” of getting a Wi-Fi password, although I once managed to watch it without root on a Lenovo tablet). If you know any other convenient, non-obvious techniques for working with Android, feel free to write about them in the comments - we will add to the collection :)

P.S. Permission is granted to freely copy and quote this article, provided that an open active link to the source is indicated and the authorship of Ruslan Tertyshny is preserved.

Modern mobile devices have quite large volume both internal memory and on SD cards, which allows you to store a fair amount of a wide variety of information. Actively using this function, users often have difficulty finding the necessary materials, not knowing how to find a file or folder on Android. This is what we will talk about today.

Finding the photo you need, thanks to the standard Gallery application, is not difficult at all. But finding a file or folder by name will be much more difficult, especially if there are quite a lot of them stored on your smartphone. In such cases, we can use one of the programs under the general name “File Manager”.

Such utilities are usually preinstalled by the gadget manufacturer on any Android device. In addition, you can use the application from Google store Play or other trusted source. Let's look at how each of these options works.

Using built-in tools

As mentioned above, almost all Android devices have file managers as standard software. It is worth considering that on different devices such applications may have slightly different names: “Files”, “File Manager”, “Dispatcher”, etc.

To find the desired file/folder, find the file manager on your smartphone (in the screenshot “files”), open it, select the search area (phone memory or SD card), and then a category (for example, “documents”), a folder with files will open , where you can select the one you need, or, click on the icon with a magnifying glass on the bottom panel. After this, a keyboard will appear with which you need to enter the file name:

After which the search results will appear and we will see the file we are looking for.

Using third party software

If your smartphone did not initially have a standard file manager, then you can use a free one from any trustworthy source or from official store Google Play. Let's see how such a tool will work using an example: popular application ES Explorer.

After installation, launch the program, in the main window, if an SD card is not inserted, the sdcard section will be indicated - this is the internal memory of your Android device. If there is a memory card, it will be designated as sdcard0, and the smartphone memory as sdcard1.

Now we select the section in which we will look for the file or folder (sdcard1 in the screenshot), open it, and here we will see all the contents. For further search, click on the magnifying glass icon located on top panel and, using the keyboard, enter the name of the desired file/folder:

After this, the program will find and display the search results. If you decide to use another file manager, the search algorithm will be exactly the same. And I have nothing more to add, we will assume that the question of how to find a folder or file on Android is closed.

If you analyze disk space on your Android device, you may be surprised to find that your photos take up several gigabytes more than they actually do. How is this possible and what needs to be done to free up memory?

The problem is the collection of thumbnail files on your device that are stored in the Thumbnails folder.

The thing is, for each image file that is stored on the device, Android OS creates a thumbnail so that they load faster in the gallery when you open it for viewing. Third-party apps like WhatsApp and Viber can also create their own thumbnails when they scan image files. Typically the folder where these thumbnails are stored is called Thumbnails.