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.nomedia file hides audio files from Play Music, but also from Notification picker.

bramkaandorp

Well-Known Member
Nov 17, 2013
129
20
This seems to be a common problem, but I haven't found a solution that works yet.

Notification files show up in Play Music (even those in /media/audio/notifications, which should be invisible by default).

Generally the solution given is to put a blank file named ".nomedia" in the offending folder. While that does hide the files from Play Music, it also hides them from the ringtone/notification picker, so that the solution works against itself.

Is there any way to get around these problems?

I've tried restarting my phone, thinking that a reboot couldn't hurt, and while it didn't hurt, it didn't help either.

Thanks in advance.
 
What device and Android version are you using?

My notifications are in /sdcard/Notifications and are ignored by tge music player. Music files are in /sdcard/Music and are ignored by the ringtone picker. No .nomedia files needed.

I'm using a Nexus 7 2013. I also had the notification files in the folder /sdcard/Notifications, but Google Play found them nonetheless.

That's why I moved them to the folder /media/audio/notifications, but Play Music found them there as well, so I'm stumped.
 
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After resetting the app preferences and moving the files from /sdcard/Notifications to /sdcard/media/audio/notifications, then rebooting, nothing has changed. The files show up in Play Music again.

The annoying part of it is that my phone does this well, even though the files are simply in /sdcard/Notifications.
 
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Try this, it worked for me on Nexus 5 running 5.0, http://androidforums.com/threads/hide-ringtones-from-musicplayer-but-not-ringtone-list.544358/

Make sure you delete any notification/ringtone/alarm files from your old location. I notice my phone also has notification ringtone alarm folders in the root of the internal memory as well with some default files in them. These no not appear to show up in my music player either, so you may be able to just move your files into these rather than in a separate media folder as noted in the link. I did not try that.
 
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Putting notification sounds in extSdCard/Media/Notifications used to work for me but some update or change broke that workaround and using a .nomedia file not only hides from the sound picker but stops it from playing the notification even if I set it with another app. The solution that worked for me was to convert to .m4a with Audacity since the music player I use (default player on Galaxy S5) seems to not index .m4a files but the sound picker does.

edit: Also note I had to set the notification sound in my messaging app, not just the notification settings, otherwise it was just playing the default notification, possibly because it had the same name but a different extension than the original tone and had the cached filename in the messaging app? I don't know but it was necessary.
 
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