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
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.
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.
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/Media now. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
