Yes
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.
Have you checked your “Downloads”-folder?
What, Downloads/04gd8365he.pdf?
I’m just checking this meme instead
where exactly is the downloads folder?
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.
/storage/emulated/0/Download
that’s what total commander told me
Who is this commander and why is he is fucking around with my downloads?
For Android, I can recommend CX Filebrowser
I haven’t tried that one but FX filebrowser is awesome
Total Commander is a godsend. I don’t know how people use Windows or Android without it.
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!
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.
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.
In your phone. Just like how your computer has things in the C drive.
The files are in the computer?
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
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
It’s either in
/sdcard/Downloadsor/external/emulated/0/android/data/com.google.chrome/Downloads. Couldn’t be easier.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.
Boost saves in
/Pictures/Boost.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.
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
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.
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.
oh yeah? now list paths for all the other applications
You have other applications?
chrome instead of anything besides that
🤢🤮
com.microsoft.iemobileOh god, i didn’t know such an atrocity exists on Android
My next phone will be a linux phone, my current one would be if I didn’t get it for free
Your best bet is to find something that runs droidian.
Runs android first, but you can install Linux.
Nice, be sure to make a post about how it goes!
It’s pretty relatable. A lot of apps like to use their own folders, like my lemmy app.
If I download files from my banking app they get saved to root (sdcard), most others save to my Download folder. Then there is DCIM where I have photos, but Telegram does not care, for Signal I have to export each file to the file system seperately.The worst thing though is that the files in Downloads/ are ordered A-Z by default. No idea if this is a LineageOS thing, but it drives me crazy.
for Signal I have to export each file to the file system seperately
To be fair, files being isolated inside of Signal is the whole point
And it’s a good thing too!
It’s the dumbest setup possible with how android handles saved files, and even worse by all the hoops to put files or look at files from specific folders on your phone due to all the permissions crap.
But the easiest way to find where something was saved is to open up “Files” which is “Files by Google” to be exact. It will whatever file you saved or modified right there in the “recent” section at the top so you can look at whatever goofball place it was actually saved to.
I really don’t understand why the whole finder/explorer/dolphin way of doing things wasn’t carried over to phones.
I’ve only really used Apple phones, but that was something that shocked me right away.
Back when I jailbroke my phones (before I got lazy) I had an awesome file explorer with the finder icon that made me feel at home for a bit.
I feel like this meme only makes sense for people who don’t know basic file system navigation…
Literally never had this problem, not once, starting at Android 2.3 when I got my first android phone. It’s literally just files and folders, like any other OS.
Even when dealing with apps that don’t have a way to check where a file is, any file manager app worth a damn, will have a way to easily find the most recently saved/modified files.
So I had a problem with this, and I am a cd… cd/ format . person who loves computer file systems.
I think what messed me up is that certain apps have different default save folders, and I wouldn’t know where they were or forget.
A given program having a default save location is true on any platform. The “My Documents” folder on windows is used for anything but. So many applications throw files in there it’s basically useless.
With Android, application files are kept in application specific locations, while user files basically always end up in Download or Pictures, sometimes, rarely, Documents. DCIM for system camera photos.
If you need to clear an applications files, that can be done via that apps page in settings.
The only difference I can see is that on phones, default file system behaviour is designed so that it gets out of most people’s way, while those of us who know how it works can still use a file explorer app just fine.
While normies rely on the default file picker showing a monolithic list of what’s on their phones in chronological order, we don’t have to. When that thing appears, you can find any file management apps installed from the hamburger menu, and find your files using them instead.
This ☝️
And when your storage is full from videos and gifs that friends exchange in WhatsApp or whatever, or Instagram keeping everything you post, and you want to clean up, there’s no easy way to do it.
Most can be cleaned by going into Settings, Apps, Whatsapp, Storage and clicking delete cache. permanently saved ones may be more problematic
No. It’s not deleted with the cache. It’s like everything is saved in a separate folder.
Yeah for that it is launch files app, choose device, android, data, app/com/org folder, then there will be a files subfolder. which is often split into pictures, audio, movies, etc.
it’s a deep dive for sure
Oh boy. Do I have a bone to pick with whatsapp. Their message data management is a complete clusterfuck.
Though if you just want to delete media, that’s easy.
Whatsapp has it’s own folder in root that contains a folder for each file type. Edit: Not anymore, it’s in/Android/media/whatsapp/WhatsApp/Medianow. You can safely delete them all, though media files will no longer be accessible in your message history, as WhatsApp has literally no way to keep that stuff around without monolithically saving all of it on your device, locally, forever.Instagram saves content to a couple folders, all in easy to find places like root, Movies, DCIM and Pictures.
As for Instagram app data, you can clear that from app settings.
I had a photo on my Galaxy I needed to delete, I had to delete it from three separate folders.
Is that a Samsung problem, not an Android problem?
Almost certainly, I for one don’t remember having to do it that on my Pure, but you can bet I was pretty pissed at everyone involved anyways.
Delete it all you like, if you run Google photos, it will still end up stuck in there.
You got me paranoid and I had to check!
No, as it happens, I have a habit of denying all the permissions I can so at least Google pretends it’s not in the cloud.
Don’t use
someone else’s computerany cloud services…easy.
my opinion might be biased as someone who deliberately avoids samsung products because of horrible software and bad quality control (on some devices).
yes, that’s a samsung thing.
Sorta makes sense.
It’s like my generation not knowing how to fix cars because our fathers all did it.
some of them really don’t, but people in my circle (all of them gen z) are familiar to a degree. many of them use android phones and/or windows, which very much require that if you want to do anything useful.
Hey did you work with any of the fuchsia people who got laid off? Do you know if the project is planned to be cancelled any time soon?
?
No, and I’ve no clue.
Android 14 :/
MiXplorer, Solid Explorer or Material Files
(in order of power user needs + features -----> ease of use)
MiXplorer on XDA is king.
I know where my saved files go.
It’s not that hard to figure out actually.
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.
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.
sudo rm rf /*
I find the Files app (from Google) helps me manage what files I have where on my phone. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.nbu.files
As far as I know Files was preinstalled on my Moto G phone.
It’s so bad that it even can’t remember file sorting options.
I recommend Material Files from f-droid, it seems more barebones, but is superior in terms of functionality, especially for power-users and rooted devices (also available in the Play Store)
