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.
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.
Android 14 :/
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!
Mostly
/storage/emulated/0/Download
or symlink
/sdcard/Download
Dont even try when it comes to torrent downloads. They go into a top secret location only the torrent app knows of.
Just use termux and rtorrent, turning android into a linux terminal is the best
Have you looked into Android/com.torrentapp.name/files?
Too logical 😠
Just found torrent client “BiglyGT” on f-droid. It can download to random folder on sdcard through SAF (Storage access framework).
Have you checked your “Downloads”-folder?
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
I’m just checking this meme instead
where exactly is the downloads folder?
/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
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 the fuck knows.
Like the fictional village of Germelshausen, it only appears for a single day every 100 years.
In your phone. Just like how your computer has things in the C drive.
The files are in the computer?
I just run Files and the Downloads folder is listed there under Categories.
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.
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.
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.
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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
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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
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)
As far as I know Files was preinstalled on my Moto G phone.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Sorta makes sense.
It’s like my generation not knowing how to fix cars because our fathers all did it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Now try it on an iPhone
Or OneDrive.
File > Save As > Desktop.
Doesn’t save to local Desktop, but the OneDrive desktop wherever the fuck that is.
This is why I say that Windows is not user friendly. People just got trained to put up with it.
Just did.
It went right to the “Saved on my iPhone” section of the Files app.
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!
Let’s not talk about the iPhone file explorer lol.
I was told iphones don’t even use files.
Apple loves lying to its users.
As a unixy based OS it is all files
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.
Normies get confused by file systems, Apple is smart enough to understand the mind of the normie masses 😅
“What’s a computer?”
There is one?
There’s literally a thing you can click on called, get this…
FILES
It’s where all of the files on the device live, at least non-photo/video files.
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
You’re referring to some ancient history at this point. iPhones may look like they always have, but they’ve come a long way over the years.
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.
I think they discontinued the iPod a few years ago
RIP to a legend.
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.
Nobody came here for answers, they came here for problems that they don’t care to understand!
Now get lost like my restaraunt menus!
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.
That’s fair, but not relevant to what I was responding to hahaha
Also I don’t want anything by google, personally. I don’t use any google products or services.
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
No they don’t. You’re also an idiot, and Apple actually got in a huge amount of trouble for doing it.
Yes.
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.
I know! It’s saved in [DEFAULT FOLDER]
On an unencrypted sd card that is removable.
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!
Click the name. It doesn’t look like an option, because there are buttons for download or cancel, but the file name is also a link to the file.
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.
Nope, not on my Pixel 7 using Chrome
It works on my Pixel 7 using Chrome!
Show me a screenshot of where you’re able to tap to open the file because I certainly can’t find it…
If I tap the file name it opens the keyboard, if itap the folder it shows how much space is available…
Oh wow, mine presents differently:
Yeah someone told me it’s the only option in the download settings that needed to be deactivated
What is that like android 6
You’ll need to turn off “ask where to save files” in chrome download settings.
Thanks, it works! Funny how that’s an option considering it downloads PDF files without asking anything the first first time and only ask for your input if you try to download it a second time…
This made me laugh more than the meme. Thanks.
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I have a Downloads folder where some things go. :(
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!
Everything does not go there, different file types seem to go to different places. Successful downloads don’t ever appear sometimes.
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.
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Do I press download differently? There shouldn’t be skill in the default download location.
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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.
Yes, that’s exactly how the two android phones I’ve used have worked, and why this post is getting upvoted is a mystery to me.
There are also folders called “Camera” and “Screenshots”, and I’ll give you three guesses where photos and screenshots go.
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
Annoys me every time. But as I remember you could click on the file and open it on older android systems.
Still works for me on current phone