Help Android 9 Pie - media scanner not automatically scanning SD Card

[Julian Bond]

I have a 256Gb SD card installed on a Cubot X19 phone. The SD Card is formatted as exFAT, NOT internal storage. I've copied a large quantity of MP3 files into directories within /music/ on this card. With Android v8.1 whenever I copied a new directory, the media scanner would kick in immediately, read the MP3 tags, and the files would appear in the system media library. They were then available to be played in media players such as Google Play Music.

Since upgrading to V9.0 Pie, the media scanner doesn't kick in for these files. If I manually fire up a media scanner app such as https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.house.noranuko.mediarescanner the tracks then appear ok.

If I copy the files into the internal storage /music/ folder they are immediately visible.

So it looks as though the media scanner only automatically scans incoming files copied over the USB port if they are placed in internal storage and not on the SD Card.

Has anyone else seen this? And is there any way of persuading the media scanner/storage app to automatically scan incoming files on the SD Card the way it used to with v8.1?

 

[Julian Bond]

Just to confirm.
- Copy a small directory of 8 mp3s to sdcard/music/
- Check it does not appear in the media database and is not visible in music players
- Reboot phone
- Wait a couple of minutes
- It does now appear in the media database

- Copy another small directory of 8 mp3s to internal/music/
- Check the media database and media players and confirm that the files are immediately visible

So the media scanner is run in background after a reboot and does scan the SD Card. But it doesn't run and scan files after a file copy to the SD card. However, it does run and scan after a file copy to the internal memory.