file - downloads
me: /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/org.mozilla.firefox/files/Download or /storage/3564-3130/Android/data/org.mozilla.firefox/files/Download here I come!
POV: you let udisks2 automount your drive for you.
It’s either in
/sdcard/Downloadsor/external/emulated/0/android/data/com.google.chrome/Downloads. Couldn’t be easier.oh yeah? now list paths for all the other applications
You have other applications?
Couldn’t be easier.
Would certainly be easier if there wasn’t an or in your statement.
Best I can do is three more ors.
Except when it is not…
For example Boost saves photo is some photo folder somewhere.
The only way i can find anything is using a photo app and scanning my entire phone to find things.
Don’t you pick on first run?
It’s a newer api but I know Sync does that, as well as mgit and a few others.
I was being facetious. Yeah, every app saves into a different location. It’s bonkers.
Sandboxing is a good thing. It makes it a lot easier and safer for billions of devices to run millions of apps.
Until it stops me from doing something I want to do and know is safe like modifying my Obsidian notes that are on Nextcloud from my phone. Why can’t it simply prompt me to give Obsidian rw access to that directory or even have some way to allow me to manually change the permissions myself to get it working.
The right design decision isn’t necessarily the best for a specific use case. Making the system overall rigid and strict by default makes the whole thing more manageable. Adding features like “user initiated opt-in shared filesystem access for sandboxed apps” increases complexity, hence cost and maintenance burden and likelihood of bugs. Not to say this feature isn’t worth it, but it’s necessary to accept some rough edges in some use cases.
Making the system overall rigid and strict by default makes the whole thing more manageable.
More manageable for who? Certainly not me. Which, considering I own the device, is bullshit. Desktop apps have had this figured out for decades.
The people who build the device and software ecosystem you take for granted.
Sure except that we already have computers where every app uses the same folder structure, just with some files/folders protected with elevated permissions that aren’t accessible to every app. We already have a solution that works and every desktop OS uses. Why would mobile go for a solution that isn’t actually usable?
Eh then you get everyone saving random shit in the Documents folder.
That’s what people don’t realise… There were very clear distinctions laid out many years ago with how and where data should go places (with win 95, I believe).
The desktop solution isn’t feasible in the mobile context. Even for desktops, you see an increased interest in reproducible/containerized/sandboxed environments with docker, flatpak/snap, immutable operating systems, and so on. It’s all about managing complexity.
All of that interest is from people making computers, or people who manage security. Not from people that use computers as part of their life/work (in contrast to those who’s work is entirely about the computer itself). From a usability standpoint, this type of sandboxing for every app is cumbersome and all it leads to is users finding unsafe work arounds. I used to be able to use my android phone much more as a regular computer than I can now. And I wanted to make a simple app for myself to allow me to automatically copy and catalog photos from my cameras sd card to an external HDD, and I literally cannot do this without jumping through a million permissions and API hoops on Android even though I never plan on publishing this app for others to use. It became such a pain to figure out how to get access to the folders I would need, I just gave up on the entire project. I essentially needed a tool to systematically copy and rename files, and it’s nearly impossible because of these nonsensical policies.
All of that interest is from people making computers,
like the people who make phones for other people to use
Boost saves in
/Pictures/Boost.
chrome instead of anything besides that
🤢🤮
com.microsoft.iemobileOh god, i didn’t know such an atrocity exists on Android
I’m not sure where things are on any device other than desktops tbh
Have you checked your “Downloads”-folder?
Not always, though. Some apps save images to /Pictures, and in there, some of them make their own folder. It really is kinda half baked.
if it’s images you’re looking for, have you checked your gallery? if an app saves an image in a way it doesn’t show up in your gallery, get a better app cuz that one sucks
Sometimes it’s their own folder in their own sandboxed app directory. A lot of apps do that now to avoid permissions issues. Like the GBA emulator I use no longer puts game saves in the user’s root directory so you can’t even see them without a USB connection to a PC, and even if you do that it’s extreme obfuscated.
Ok the first bit I can kinda understand, but obfuscating them? Now that has to be intentional
If you refer to pizza boy, the dev told me by email that there’s an option to save somewhere else (I sent an email complaining that hiding saves in /android/data/com.app.blabla is stupid (can only be accessed via USB and it gets wiped when you uninstall the app), at least use /android/media/com.app.blabla
where exactly is the downloads folder?
/storage/emulated/0/Download
that’s what total commander told me
Total Commander is a godsend. I don’t know how people use Windows or Android without it.
For Android, I can recommend CX Filebrowser
I haven’t tried that one but FX filebrowser is awesome
So convenient .
Well
/storage/emulated/0/seems to be sort of like a home folder, so it is quite convenientIt’s the kind of /home you have when you don’t want people to stumble upon it… The kind of place you archive your “homework” in.
Not my gentleman’s special interest literature!
Who is this commander and why is he is fucking around with my downloads?
We conveniently place that stuff in /home/$USER in Unix-likes. Even have standards to re-define Downloads & co. path.
Guess Google wanted the share-to-app and share-to-cloud like Apple, but rven there users sometimes like s file manager.
On Android it’s in the root folder. So basically if you just open any file explorer app, it should be on the first screen. The equivalent to the “C” drive or “My Computer” on Windows.
In your phone. Just like how your computer has things in the C drive.
The files are in the computer?
Who the fuck knows.
Like the fictional village of Germelshausen, it only appears for a single day every 100 years.
I just run Files and the Downloads folder is listed there under Categories.
Ever since like android 11 nothing saves in my download folder anymore on the SD card I have inserted.
Everything gets saved deep in the android subdirectory, and then somewhere in a folder named loosely after the app that downloaded it, where the app has made ANOTHER folder to put the file.
And then you can’t even move it with a third party folder app. It’s gotten so annoying lately I’d swear they just want to kill the SD card from android completely.
On my Android 13 device browsers save in sd card/Android/data/com.my.browser. This folder can only be accessed on the default, hidden file manager or on a PC. Not even read-only access, but straight up nothing. At this point I just don’t bother directly downloading to my sd card anymore, I just download to internal storage and move it all to sd card/Downloads every so often
What, Downloads/04gd8365he.pdf?
I’m just checking this meme instead
ITT: people who have no working knowledge of file system navigation complain about the lack of such knowledge
honestly it’s not this, is just the fact that android puts so much shit in between you and whatever you’re trying to do.
The concept of downloading a file is simple, it’s courtesy to tell you where it downloads at the very least. Android doesnt exactly have the most sane of defaults.
dont get me wrong, im a linux user, im a certified power user, even i can’t stand android.
It’s easier to just redownload the file at points. I think I got like 6 copies of the same utility bill on my mobile because it was easier.
Would anyone know where wallpapers are stored? I took a picture with an older phone (Oneplus 6) and used it as such. I upgraded to Nothing Phone 1 and I am using it as wallpaper because it copied when migrating but I cannot find anywhere for the life of me!
If it was using a version of android, photos are usually stored in DCIM folders either on your phone’s internal storage or more likely on the SD card.
Not there. At this point I don’t think it is a “camera” picture anymore but rather a system or custom wallpaper.
https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/name.lmj001.savetodevice/ I just use share option and select this app it just saves where ever u want…
It is so stupid that this app is needed, and so useful.
Android has ways for app devs to specify where files get saved. App devs just usually don’t give a shit, because they want to write a single lowest common codebase for android and iOS.
Developers not bothering with Android features because they don’t exist on iOS is both infuriating and gives me IE6 era vibes.
IE6 era vibes
But… this is a nearly opposite situation, no? Microsoft added a bunch of their own shit with no attempt at standardization, and instead of simply not using those features, a ton of websites started making IE a hard requirement.
On an unencrypted sd card that is removable.
Android 14 :/
It’s in Recents
It’s never in Recents. Recents is utterly useless unless you’re using one of the Google apps, and even then it’s unreliable.
cx file explorer. u welcome
*It’s often in Recents
Recents isn’t really a location, but a summary.
Most (all?) Iapps save images in /Pictures/[appname]
Photos taken with the camera are stored in a subfolder under/DCIM/ for example /DCMI/camera.
All my downloaded files end up in /Downloads/
The path to downloads is technically /storage/emulated/0/Downloads
But that doesn’t really ever matter because /storage/emulated/0/ is treated as root in at least the two file explorers I have.
If I mount another storage device it will probably be mounted in some weird path, but too don’t matter since file browsers will hide that.
The only time it matters for me is when using termux. The home directory has some weird ass path (/data/data/com.termux/files/home) when using termux which can make it annoying to transfer files. BUT Android storage gets mounted as ~/storage/emulated/0/. So transferring files from downloads to termux home, is as simple as
cp ~/storage/emulated/0/downloads/file.txt ~/Accessing the files from an app is very annoying and complicated, and that’s if not completely restricted.
Accessing the dirs you often need is very easy
whqt does emulated here mean
It’s an emulated FAT SD card for compatibility. Android uses a Linux file system with file permissions and modern features, but exposes it as a fake (emulated) FAT SD card.
This is turning a generation of people tech illiterate. The young people I interact with are smart because they’re all employed by a tech company and mentored by us dinosaurs, but I’ve heard some horror stories of the tech literacy of the average young person.
Touchscreen was a mistake.
To be fair, Android is absolutely atrocious whenever files are involved.
Had and have magnitudes of more problems with file management on iOS; it has improved a bit with a basic native file browser.
Still can’t rename file extensions though
I just tried with the default files app. You can definitely rename file extensions.
Wow you’re right. Just checked again, they must have added that this new major iOS version.
Is there some higher level thing preventing this?
If I open a terminal on my galaxy s23 I don’t see anything special with file extensions:
$ echo foo > shit.txt
$ mv shit.txt shit.mp4
$ cat shit.mp4
foo
I was talking about files on iOS.
Don’t need the terminal for that. I can use Google Files to rename a pdf to .txt and it opens in a text editor
Don’t need the Google Files for that. I can use the terminal to rename a file.
Touch input isn’t the problem. Hiding the file system is.
Yup. I teach at a university. It used to be adequate for instructions to say something along the lines of
open the file
C://Folder/anotherfolder/subfolder/document.extI encounter more and more students every year that have no idea how to do this.
Your path syntax is wrong tho…
Yes, this is much worse than when a bunch of old people were upset when young people didn’t know how to use a telegraph/party line/rotary dial/gramophone/touchtone/turntable/fax/dialup modem/cassette deck/etc. Because now it’s happening now, and back then it was happening then.
The difference is all that stuff went away, traditional desktop computers aren’t going anywhere. Sure, you can probably manage fine at home with just a phone, but not in a lot of jobs.
Your phone is measuring time by counting how many seconds has passed since 1970-01-01 00:00 UTC. Doesn’t matter if you’re on android or apple, the OS is based on ideas of Bell Labs people’s ideas from the 1960’s.
I’m an IT teacher at a community centre, I genuinely never thought I would see the day when a student younger than me enrolled. I wrongly assumed my role as a public educator would just fade out as younger generations required generally less training around computers.
Obviously courses in disability service centres would remain, and accredited training for people to kick off or retarget their careers would still exist.
But the person at the local library who meets twice a week and teaches grandma how to close the tabs on her phone felt like a job that was destined to die.
I’m in my 30s and this year I have a few teenagers in my class. The conversations are hilarious, they don’t know how to read a file location adreess or open a program that isn’t pinned to the taskbar, but at the same time, I don’t know how to access the notifications bar on an iPhone or quickly find the wifi settings without going through general settings…because I went from windows to 98, to a blackberry, to an Android, just like they went from an ipad toddler to an iPhone teen, and only now are they having Windows 11 thrown at them, and of all the computers to try and learn to use, this wouldn’t be my first recommendation (but it’s what our government funds us to teach 🤷♀️)
The skill divide is so hard to explain too. My elderly students just stare blankly at one screen, overwhelmed and confused, unsure how to recognise anything. Nothing stands out as a link, or a click able button, because the entire visual landscape is new to them. There is often a lot of hand holding which can be frustrating especially when you made a huge breakthrough in their confidence and independence only to have come in the next week feeling insecure about their skills because they’ve forgotten a little bit, or had a bad spam caller over the weekend who made them want to never touch a computer again.
Then the teens, who know what links look like and generally what they do will rush ahead, they may not know what it is exactly they’re trying to do, but they think they know what end result is expected and they generally know how to avoid catastrophic issues so they just barrel ahead, I’ll see them make 40 clicks a second for something that usually takes 2, because they’re throwing spaghetti at the wall.
I had a project last week. Dead simple. Save a linked file to a target location, import the file into another program through either drag and drop or browsing for the file, then change 1 thing, and export the final file into another target location, as specified on the activity sheet.
Barely 5 minutes in, I’m still helping Brenda get her mouse dongle plugged in, and one of the teens is finished. And yes, they have every file I asked for, and every edit I asked for, but both are just sitting in the downloads folder. And now we’re at the end looking back, the teen is confused because they have the edited file that is required to "finish*, how is it wrong, and I’m trying to explain why skipping the steps about target locations means they’ll have to start again because this activity is all about target locations and I don’t actually give two shits about this file I just need them to put things in and out of a folder until they can explain to me “a folder is a container” and not just stare into space because a folder is a black hole on their phone things they save go to until they need them again and just download them again.
I’m a Millenial, and it’s been wild to see how i’m basically near the top of the bell curve when it comes to understanding the basics of using computers. Like you, I thought general computer illiteracy would die with the Boomers… but here we are.
Stuff like that are infuriating. I’m in high school and there’s an animation class.
The teacher has very clearly told the class about a million times to save the files in
OneDrive/2024/Animation/People are still saving it in downloads or documents or somewhere else and then saying they forgot where they saved it and did nothing the whole class.
Nothing stands out as a link, or a click able button, because the entire visual landscape is new to them.
That’s because modern UI designers are all about form over function. UI rules were worked out 40 years ago with the first gui’s. But you don’t get a promotion for maintaining code. So everyone has to do something different to get noticed.
So now we have UI’s where interactive and non interactive elements are mixed without any visual distinction.
For better or worse, we’re going the way of “the car guy”. It used to be something everyone needed to know a little bit about, but now fades into the background with a handful of experts.
Damn that’s a good way to put it.
As long as the non-experts somehow manage to make a living to pay for our expertise. I heard a coworker vent about her son who wants to drop out of school (assuming elementary / middle) to focus on his streaming career…
I’m car guy, IT guy, home maintenance guy, and electronics repair guy.
I learned how to do everything because I’m a cheap ass that won’t replace what can be fixed and won’t pay to have something be fixed when I can manage it myself.
I got 240,000 miles on a car right now and it’s never seen the inside of a shop. Last big screen TV was free because it was broken and then I soldered new LEDS on to fix it. Paid $25 for an $800 dishwasher that just needed disassembling and cleaning. Also $25 for a front load whirlpool washing machine with a broken internal lock mechanism that I repaired. Same for a dryer with bad rollers inside.
People blow way too much money on buying new stuff instead of just learning how to fix and maintain things now. /old man rant
First android I ever had was a Galaxy S2. Goddammit that phone was so nice. I even bought a 2nd one when the first one died. But android file trees are way easier to navigate than iOS.
There’s a app called files that takes you to your saved storage, it’s not even difficult
And Fossify File Manager if you don’t want to deal with Google.
If you’re using a stock android device, the OS on your phone still has permissions to read and write to storage, by necessity. If what you’re concerned about is privacy, you have very limited ability to set storage scopes if you don’t trust the OS, and this doesn’t really change if you install an app.
If you’re using fossify file manager or any other file manager, you’ve given that app+the default Files app access to your storage. This is not more private. Most of those similar apps are essentially just skins on top of the default manager (which I suppose could be useful). This only really adds attack surface and doesn’t have any meaningful privacy benefits, and potentially some detractors depending on the app you use.
If you don’t trust the operating system and its utilities, the best option is to find an operating system you trust, and not to just install new skins on top of existing apps.
You probably can disable google files on most phones(and similiar google apps, even though not completely)
No I was alluding to the fact that google files layout I find difficult to work with.
sudo rm rf /*
