for starters. The fact that i had to google it to figure out what it was. Let alone randomly discover that it exists in a tangentially related search. It is an ASTRONOMICALLY inaccessible feature to someone who isn't readily invested into android.
secondarily, it should be done in the gallery, obviously. That just MAKES sense. The place where you are shown pictures, should also be the place where it lets you ignore more pictures. If you want to use .nomedia as a backend for that? Fine, Document it at atleast.
It's also just, weird... The gallery app only seems to consider a few folders existing at any state. Some better than others, i have no idea what drives the logic behind it. But you can nest them, super easily, which definitely won't cause any issues. If you have a single folder you do want to show, but 9 that you don't, you need 9 no media files, because that's convenient apparently.
I mean really any other system would've been better, a directory list, a file table, a database, literally anything that lets you mark it interactively. Having a single HIDDEN file, determine the state of an entirely independent app is just next level hackery. You really shouldn't ever do that. It's just fundamentally bad design philosophy. It'd be like a lightswitch on the opposite side of your home, preventing your garage door from opening.
.gitignore would be application specific though? In that case you have a semi reasonable usage case, because it's obviously going to be documented, and it's not like it interferes with too much else.
It's wild to me that everyone here talking about how much Android sucks is just airing greivances about the stock apps from Google/Samsung/etc.
The gallery app is not part of Android.
The file manager is not part of Android.
pretty much every app that came preinstalled on your phone is not part of the OS.
You don't hate Android, you hate the bloatware that came on your phone.
yet another big problem with android. Why does every OEM have their own flavor that is equally shit.
Im sure people will tell me to just root it or use different software, my brother in christ i want you to ship me a phone that i can fucking use, not one that i have to sterilize and give amnesia. Linux has been doing this for a million years, why can't android?
Wow it's almost as if when there's a term that actually covers multiple different operating systems, there's going to be variations in quality between them! Imagine that!
doesnt make it any better, i would know, I'm a linux user.
If you don't like debian, great, don't use it, install something else? Don't like arch? Great install something else. Dont like arch or debian? There are still more options.
Dont like KDE? Thats fine, theres, mate, cinnamon, LXDE, LXQT, XFCE, etc....
Dont like DEs? Great, there are WM's, i3, sway, awesome, bspwm, dwm, etc...
ALL of those are free. All of them are interchangeable, there is no right or wrong way to use linux.
yet if i buy an android phone from one of the most prominent android phone manufacturers NONE of that applies. And actually i've just wasted all my money, and actually i simply shouldn't have been an "idiot" and bought something that was actually good, like any number of other admittedly bad phone brands.
Android itself allowing forks for manufacturers was a complete mistake, and never should've happened. My complaint here is that we should be doing better. Being told to simply "buy another phone" is a non solution, and makes you look entitled and pretentious.
I was told by nobody that linux is great, and that i should switch to it, and i switched to it and it was great. I was told by practically every android user ever since the invention of android that its better than IOS and that i should switch to it. And yet it's somehow worse than linux. I would genuinely rather use linux on my phone.
Latest example I ran into is on android TV you cannot change your dns settings in wifi config. On regular android you can. I had to spend a couple hours fiddling with my routers networking (I was doing some weird routing for a specific network that android TV is on with a VPN tun only for that network). And if it just had the ability to change the dns settings to a static value I wouldn't of had to do that. Why would they do that?
.nomedia files are fairly standard across applications on Android and Linux. Nextcloud and other applications will use them to know not to scan that forlder with automation, thumbnail creation, ml, etc. Its a simple and standard signal. It follows the .file convention so it should be hidden when not browsing with hidden files on.
i have never seen a .nomedia file on linux, not once in the 4 years i've been daily driving it. Nextcloud might use it? Idk i host my services like a true linux user (fully self hosted) so i don't have to deal with shitty software.
Regardless it's still just not a good format. It's standard in the sense that it's a .nomedia file, i suppose, that doesn't mean the implementation is going to be standard, or that it will even adhere to it at all.
It being hidden when browsing itself is a UI concern itself. Can't wait for that to be confusing.
It just seems highly fragile to have the filesystem itself tell an application maybe what to be doing with those files. I'd much rather have it be based on any other form of data structure.
This is going off my memory of an explanation I read a while ago, so I could be off on the fine details, but I believe it's one of those things that devs do indeed have the option to do, the vast majority are just lazy as shit (I'm well aware this is likely a management decision, not he individual devs themselves in most cases) and don't want to add anything that wouldn't be useful on both android and ios
That's a helluva run-on sentence but I'm too lazy to fix it.
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?
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.
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.
They're not taken for granted, they are compensated by the corporations I'm purchasing the device from. Again, these problems have already been solved on desktop for decades. They're not breaking new ground here.
They’re not taken for granted, they are compensated by the corporations I’m purchasing the device from.
You're taking for granted the requirements that need to be met in order for the device you're purchasing to be technically and commercially viable. It needs to work, it needs to be safe, it needs to comply with privacy regulations and so on.
Again, these problems have already been solved on desktop for decades. They’re not breaking new ground here.
Managing complexity with containerization and sandboxing is occurring on desktops too. It's more mainstream in the mobile ecosystem because of essential differences in the ways users interact with phones versus desktops.
Managing complexity with containerization and sandboxing is occurring on desktops too.
Yes and if I want something in a container I do so. It's my choice. I'm not forced into it by design choices made based on being too cheap to go beyond the absolute bare minimum.
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.
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.
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
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
Don't forget "This file has already been downloaded, do you want to download it again?"
And the options are to cancel or download again but you can't open the already existing file from the prompt, so you might as well just download that fucking PDF for the fifth time since it's not as if you knew where the bloody thing's been downloaded anyway!
Thanks, it works! Funny how that's an option considering it downloads files without asking anything the first first time and only ask for your input if you try to download it a second time...
It links to a file with that name. There have been times where I download a pdf and click the name only for my phone to open a different pdf than the one I was supposed to be downloading. Turns out they both had the same name.
It makes sense. I don't think it's possible to detect if the contents in two files are identical before downloading it, so all it can do is to compare the file name.
Anyway, the dialogue could be more helpful in this regard, but I guess that would also annoy or confuse some users.
I don't know what setting you've accidentally turned on, but all my browser downloads go to my Downloads folder by default. I'll admit in-app downloads can end up in a few different spots, though. Most in-app picture downloads end up either in Downloads or in a subfolder inside the Pictures folder, though.
Each application can have its own default download location. Reddit apps were particularly bad about that and it may have carried over into lemmy as well. But learning the settings for the software you want to use isn't a terrible ask.
Yeah, where I've got a shit load of files that, the first time, automatically download with their default name which is usually a bunch of random letters.pdf, it's quicker to just download it again than to find it!
DCIM probably. While my stuff is in Media, because pictures and videos are always a mixed bag anyway. OpenCamera allows changing the save path, luckily; Media/Camera
Some apps save to their internal storage; /data/data/funny.app.name or /storage/emulated/0/Android/funny.appp.name. It would be funny if not for wanting to cry.
Btw, why not just mount internal storage to /Internal, user home /storage/emulated/0 to /home/<name> and external to /sdcard1 /sdcard2 /otg, @google?
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.
True, the folder is pretty easy to find and always the same.
Although the big problem is how quickly that folder can get messy.
Mine is filled with so much pdf files that i never want to sort, sometimes there's duplicates because i didn't want to scroll to find the first one so i downloaded it a second time.
Yeah lol I love how this commenter is mad about apps being sandboxed. There’s a downloads folder in the files app, or apps can have their own virtual filesystems, also accessible within the files app. Stupid iOS and ensuring that apps can’t just write to wherever they want on the filesystem
To be fair, you can't write wherever you want on Android, either. For example, you can't write to most of the files in /Androidunless you use one of the many, many exploits to do so since it's basically a protected system area.
He was more mad at the app developers for not putting effort into mzking the android port appropriate for android. And the fact that they don't bother providing common needed functions for android apps. Like configurable settings.
Im not an expert on either as I tend to be a linux pc developer.
But user accounts is the way linux handles a program having its own space. Andriod has def made a choice from the begging not to have, and now to limit. The multi user part of linux. Assigning a user and group account to programs. Works great as a way of limiting programs ability to interfere with files of other programs without su access to allow the approval of only assess to those approved.
So I agree android makes a bad choice to ignore any extra protection.
The worst is when an android app is clearly an iOS port. E.g Patreon app saves all files under a generic name rather than the one you get when saving the same file from a browser, because I guess on iOS it just goes into your camera reel without a filename anyway. Or how Bluesky app just straight up says "saved to your camera reel" and puts it in your DCIM folder, with no option to specify a different location.
The worst is when an android app is clearly an iOS port.
This always means there are zero settings. If there's no way of configuring the app, I find an alternative. There are few things more frustrating than software that assumes one size fits all.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
I had an iPhone back when the 3Gs was the newest phone, then an iPod touch 4g after that. None of them had a file explorer while my android phone from the time did. I didn't know they had added one until recently when I saw it on my roommate's phone. So they probably didn't know iOS had one
Yeah, I understand. It does make sense if you think about the demographic that usually uses iPhones vs Androids, I'd be willing to bet 80% of iPhones/iPods (do they even still make the iPod touch?) have only ever opened that app mistakenly haha.
Not trying to start a flame war or anything, just most iPhone users I know would pretty much never need to use the file explorer.
Yeah, the average iPhone user probably doesn’t use Files at all. Photos stores all of your photos and videos, so it’s really just PDFs that go in there for me. And a lot people don’t ever download PDFs anyways, since you can view them directly in a browser.
That isn’t a negative though. You’re saying that it auto sorts downloaded content well enough that the user doesn’t even have to be aware of how to access the file manager to still use the phone effectively. That isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature.
For anyone who does have a baseline level of proficiency, the file manager is functional, and familiar. I use it to pass torrents to my server all the time.
With a terminal and a file manager on iOS, I don’t run into a single thing I need to do that I can’t.
Actually....android has the exact same app name. "Files" but I guess it's real name if you want to make sure you're getting the right one is "Files by Google"
For android, it seems to be the best one for finding recent stuff and navigating around. Like any newly downloaded or modified thing saved to the phone shows up under a "recently" section in Files, so it works out well for dealing with such a screwball android filing system.
I like being able to hold my phone however I want without losing a connection and not having updates pushed to me that degrade my performance to hide battery and power design flaws, myself ;-)
That’s pretty ignorant also. All phones throttle your power when your battery is old, so instead of just dying at 30% (like old android phones used to), you get a slow drain to under 5% before it dies.
It’s not a “power design” or battery flaw, it’s literal fucking physics lawl
Files as an implementation detail, sure. But my general impression of iOS is that it tries really hard to avoid exposing users to the existence of a file system.
If anyone wants an actual answer: iPhone has an option to “Save to Files” that lets you select a folder to save to just like on a desktop OS. I’ve personally never lost a file when I do this.
