Help Whatsapp Media Auto-Save Clutter

agm2992mga · Sep 11, 2013

Hi,

this is my first post here. I have the Sony Xperia Z.

Any picture I receive from contacts on Whatsapp goes directly into my main pictures directory under the album where all my camera shots etc. already are.

I use Whatsapp often to talk with various friends and receive quite a few pictures. I don't wish for these to clutter up my own camera area so deleted them, without realising that they are also gone from within Whatsapp itself now and I can no longer view them at all.

My old phone was pretty poor (Motorola Defy) but the Whatsapp media used to save to its own directory and not clutter up my own camera roll. Through googling, I understand this can be rectified easily on iPhones by changing photo privacy options and this is not the case for all Android devices.

Is there a simple fix to still be able to view Whatsapp photos but not have them save to my main camera area?

Thanks.

Slug · Sep 11, 2013

Whatsapp saves images received in its own folder structure in the device's internal storage i.e. \Whatsapp/Media/Whatsapp Images). Sony's Album app simply displays all media found on the device in one place.

There's no way to exclude particular locations from within Album, but placing an empty text file named ".nomedia" in the /Whatsapp images folder should do the same job.

agm2992mga · Sep 11, 2013

Ok,

that sounds interesting considering my previous primitive android model did it automatically.

How does one go about doing that .nomedia business?

Thanks

Slug · Sep 11, 2013

agm2992mga said:
How does one go about doing that .nomedia business?

I've attached such a file below, zipped. Just extract it to your device then copy it to the /Whatsapp/Media/Whatsapp Images folder. Note that the "." at the front of the file name is deliberate - do not remove it.

View attachment nomedia.zip

agm2992mga · Sep 11, 2013

2 things:

With some research of my own, i managed to create a .nomedia file.
However, it's as if it is only a temporary rule, as received images then appear back in the master abum after a short while after the creation of the .nomedia file.

Secondly, is it possible to configure this phone's media as I was used to with my old handset:
The camera roll includes screenshots, edits and obviously camera shots.
While whatsapp has a separate folder which can be viewed without having to enter into the app itself.
Ie. it is still easily accessible as media but does not CLUTTER my own personally created images.

Slug · Sep 11, 2013

agm2992mga said:
it's as if it is only a temporary rule, as received images then appear back in the master abum after a short while after the creation of the .nomedia file.

Are you sure they disappear at all? You need to go into Settings/Apps and clear the cache for the Album app, a step I unfortunately forgot to mention. :eek:

The thumbnails will then be recreated minus the contents of the ".nomedia" folder(s).

is it possible to configure this phone's media as I was used to with my old handset

No, the Album behaviour is fixed.

The camera roll includes screenshots, edits and obviously camera shots.

Album isn't "the camera roll"; that is found either from within the Camera app, or from Camera Albums in the My Albums tab. It's an aggregation of all media located on your device, regardless of source.

Sam-SonyXperia · Sep 12, 2013

The .nomedia file approach will work in most cases, however with certain applications like Whatsap it will not. The problem is that Whatsap forces the data to be refreshed which causes the files to appear again shortly after removing them with the above method.

Slug · Sep 12, 2013

Thanks for the insight, Sam. I didn't realise that Whatsapp did this - apologies to the OP for the misleading info.

agm2992mga · Oct 25, 2013

So is there no solution to this problem at all then, if whatsapp continually refreshes the media and brings it back anyway?

Slug · Oct 26, 2013

As stated previously, Pictures is a simple aggregate view of all media located on the handset.

One solution is to look in My albums, where media sources are separated. Images captured with the camera are found in Camera albums, while Whatsapp images are in Internal memory.

Taurasgal · Mar 28, 2015

Slug said:
I've attached such a file below, zipped. Just extract it to your device then copy it to the /Whatsapp/Media/Whatsapp Images folder. Note that the "." at the front of the file name is deliberate - do not remove it.

View attachment 61312

Hello, I hav xperia t2 ultra- i suffer from similar issue- all my whastsapp media (audio, video, pics) gets saved to internal memory and can't be trasnfered to SD through transfer to SD feature- Only way is to Clear the cache to remove the media, those are imp files i receive and i like to save few- pl explain me if there is a way to change the location for Auto Save of Whatsapp media to my External Storage/ SD card

I just connect my phone to laptop and copy the entire folder in my laptop to save it at the moment, i will be glad if you can tell me about the way to auto save whatsapp media to my Sd card

thanks in advance

Slug · Mar 28, 2015

Taurasgal said:
i will be glad if you can tell me about the way to auto save whatsapp media to my Sd card

You can't, as there is no way to set the save location in the app' settings. The best you can do is regularly move media files from internal to external memory using the pre-installed File Commander app.

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