Why does Android clutter up my SD card with so many folders and crap. I have a class 10 16 GB card so space isn't an issue. I'm just a bit OCD and when I connect my phone to my computer I see 20+ folders from different apps and what not.
Basically, why doesn't Android better organize all this stuff into one folder? Sure I could make them hidden but I don't see why there needs to be so many folders for so many different things. Where does it all go if you don't have an SD card?
Hopefully someone can offer some insight into this madness.
Tripp-phpBB said:
Why does Android clutter up my SD card with so many folders and crap. I have a class 10 16 GB card so space isn't an issue. I'm just a bit OCD and when I connect my phone to my computer I see 20+ folders from different apps and what not.
Basically, why doesn't Android better organize all this stuff into one folder? Sure I could make them hidden but I don't see why there needs to be so many folders for so many different things. Where does it all go if you don't have an SD card?
Hopefully someone can offer some insight into this madness.
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Lol
Sent from my SPH-D710 using XDA App
Agree with OP. I spend a lot of my time on my phone in the SD via root explorer. And the amount of folders NOT created by me is dizzying. And I've wondered the same about what if no sd'. Maybe that's why the the android devices before froyo performed sooo poorly. Froyo was the first iteration of android that supported move to SD. Maybe before froyo, all of that crap went to the /data partition of the painfully memory-limited devices of the time. Thus the poor performance.
Just a stab at it. Dunno. Thinking out loud - but that's what General is FOR.
But yeah, I wondered about the no SD thing before, too. And I came from winmo, where I kept a really organized SD.
sent from xda app on drews ics
It would be nice if it wasn't so bad. But for the most part it is not androids fault, its the apps you have used, I have had to get rid of so many, but now im built back up over time and trying new apps out.
Agree here also..hell ICS adds a bunch of folders I don't use..
Alarms,pictures,podcasts,music,notifications,ringtones to name a few..
It's not Android, it's dip**** developers.
All app data is supposed to be stored in [sd_card]\Android\data\[name_of_the_app]. To make it really easy they provide developers a method that gets the directory for their app called getExternalFilesDir().
Email the dip**** devs and tell them to start using getExternalFilesDir. I can tell you that TitaniumBackup and a few others have point blank refused to use that directory, as I have already emailed them.
NewsRob and a few others indicated they would look into moving to that directory during the next major release.
Thanks for the info.
@skylar
sent from xda app on drews ics
I have become so accustomed to reinstalling OS's after dealing with annual re installation of Microshaft OS's it doesnt bother me anymore.
Hell they are closed source, I pay big $$$ and have just as many issues just like another unmentioned OS.
I will take open source (Linux, Android, FreeBSD.. others) and the ability to create, not to mention share at no cost, unlike those others who charge $$$ any day of the week.
Lol, couldn't agree with this any more. Files and folders are about the only thing I'm OCD about and it bugs me to no end.
Yup, android and android developers ought to do something about folders cluttering mem cards, I also came from windows mobile before I started out with android, windows had a dedicated folder for application's data called program files, android or atleast developers should stick to the default android folder on sd cards to minimize the clutter
Related
Why is it so hard for my Mac, or my NS, or visa versa, to swap files back and forth via bluetooth? Music files are fine, but .apk's or what have you do not transfer smoothy and it really agitates me, expecially when I'm charging. Any ideas on how to make any file type transferrable?
Z
No idea but bluetooth file transfer? Who's got that kind of time in 2011, amirite?
tatwamasi said:
No idea but bluetooth file transfer? Who's got that kind of time in 2011, amirite?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nournot
transferring a tiny little .apk file thats 75.5kbs via bluetooth is much much faster than busting out the USB cord, enabling USB Mass Driver, waiting for it to pop up, and then dragging and dropping. I'm not transferring my whole music library over to my phone via bluetooth
Think dude, and post replies that'll help in the future. lolzpwnd
just use dropbox and astro - works like a charm for me
phi303 said:
just use dropbox and astro - works like a charm for me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 (but I use Linda instead of Astro). I used to use bluetooth, but dropbox really is loads better. Give it a shot if you haven't before.
Having said that, I've consistently had issues BT transferring files with my Mac, even way back when I was on WM6. It just never plays nice :/
I could never transfer apks using bluetooth on mac...used to be able to transfer folders containing items before but not anymore. Now I just use it to transfer individual stuff.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
as all the people said already
just get your free 2GB Dropbox account and transfer files instantly over WiFi
it's so fast, so simple, and so easy
ages of messing around with the USB / BT is long gone, with all the free cloud services now in days
ztm.000 said:
nournot
transferring a tiny little .apk file thats 75.5kbs via bluetooth is much much faster than busting out the USB cord, enabling USB Mass Driver, waiting for it to pop up, and then dragging and dropping. I'm not transferring my whole music library over to my phone via bluetooth
Think dude, and post replies that'll help in the future. lolzpwnd
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 to the dropbox idea. I use it all the time to get stuff between computers, different phones, different partitions etc.
So, I like this dropbox idea, but have never tried it. What are your guys' experiences on it? And how do I acquire it? Is it a market app?
Z
yes available on the market
but you need to setup your account first on the website
there's a link in my siggy
Click here to get your 2 GB FREE!
cloud storage
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Another Dropbox fan here, although I also use sshdroid (ssh server) and transfer stuff with sftp using cyberduck on the mac when i need to.
Okay first post and sure this is off to a great start, because its probably like the lamest question ever....
I see the SD card partition on the Nexus S and for the LIFE of me can't actually figure out what its for.
If USB storage is for holding media and info then what is the SD for?
At one point i was getting memory errors from apps and it said SD memory at capacity or something like that and the limit seemed VERY small. I ran a cache cleaner and removed some clashing apps (i believe) and it seemed fine after that.
Is the SD the internal RAM?
feel free to call me any derogatory name you like as long as you give me a wiki or explanation. I tried searching the forum and google but it just brings up posts where people already talk about SD with knowledge.
thanks
tevil said:
Okay first post and sure this is off to a great start, because its probably like the lamest question ever....
I see the SD card partition on the Nexus S and for the LIFE of me can't actually figure out what its for.
If USB storage is for holding media and info then what is the SD for?
At one point i was getting memory errors from apps and it said SD memory at capacity or something like that and the limit seemed VERY small. I ran a cache cleaner and removed some clashing apps (i believe) and it seemed fine after that.
Is the SD the internal RAM?
feel free to call me any derogatory name you like as long as you give me a wiki or explanation. I tried searching the forum and google but it just brings up posts where people already talk about SD with knowledge.
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The SD card is a non removable flash storage device. It's the storage you see when you mount USB storage.
Apps will cache data to the SD card, this is where any downloads go, any picture s or movies you take, etc. It is 16 GB of general storage (separate from the 1GB of internal storage).
Think of it as 'built-in'. For all practical purposes, there is a sdcard, which behaves just as it would on any other android, but you can't remove it. I'm not sure if it is physically part of the internal memory or not. I suspect there is one 16GB chip that is partitioned for internal and /sdcard.
tevil said:
Okay first post and sure this is off to a great start, because its probably like the lamest question ever....
I see the SD card partition on the Nexus S and for the LIFE of me can't actually figure out what its for.
If USB storage is for holding media and info then what is the SD for?
At one point i was getting memory errors from apps and it said SD memory at capacity or something like that and the limit seemed VERY small. I ran a cache cleaner and removed some clashing apps (i believe) and it seemed fine after that.
Is the SD the internal RAM?
feel free to call me any derogatory name you like as long as you give me a wiki or explanation. I tried searching the forum and google but it just brings up posts where people already talk about SD with knowledge.
thanks
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i am a bit stumped then. when it gave me the sd capacity it was NO WHERE near 16g's. it was like 800mbs or something. this is why my slacker kept crashing out and giving me a memory error.
is there a way in the OS to see the SD capacity? I had an app that told me but got rid of it cause i think it was also part of the crashing issues i had.
so is what your saying the SD is what you see when you USB your phone to the computer? its that root DIR. In clockwork i can see a USB and SD dir separately i believe but ill have to check again
thanks
on a side note does anyone else have slacker issues. this is how the entire subject came up to me anyway
tevil said:
i am a bit stumped then. when it gave me the sd capacity it was NO WHERE near 16g's. it was like 800mbs or something. this is why my slacker kept crashing out and giving me a memory error.
is there a way in the OS to see the SD capacity? I had an app that told me but got rid of it cause i think it was also part of the crashing issues i had.
so is what your saying the SD is what you see when you USB your phone to the computer? its that root DIR. In clockwork i can see a USB and SD dir separately i believe but ill have to check again
thanks
on a side note does anyone else have slacker issues. this is how the entire subject came up to me anyway
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Slacker works fine for me, always has (outside of it's poor ability to precache the next song).
For Storage go to Settings -> Storage. USB storage is the SD card.
What space you see when you plug in the NS to your computer's USB is the SD card.
It is not the root folder of the whole phone.
Under the "Settings -> Storage" window on your phone, the "USB Storage" is we are calling the SD card.
The Internal Storage is what the phone needs itself.
Here is mine:
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Because of all the music on my NS & the fact almost all my apps are there too, I am sucking up approx 3 gigs of SD or USb storage space.
The NS is sucking up approx 800megs of space, of the 1 gig available to it.
As for your Slacker issues, Although I am not familiar with this application, have you tried just reinstalling it.
Heeter
cool thanks guys.
just couldnt figure whyd they name something twice.
As for slacker i beleive it was a mix of
juice defender (which i may try again solo to see if its really that good)
ad blocker (which was jsut something i tried but never really needed, good riddance)
and like these two cleaners which i dont remember the names of.
Now i have NG cache cleaner which is nice and my slcaker seems to be normal again
wasnt sure if the adblocker was seeing the commercials in slacker as ads and trying to block them out causing problems so i got rid of that first.
as the other guy said the pre chaching was HORRIBLE at times making me think the app locked. but after those removals it worked fine with occassional lag betweensongs
I got my Nexus 7, just rooted it and thinking of free up some space. Which apps can I remove without damaging the system? Can I remove these without any trouble:
Calendar (i will use Jorte)
Currents
Earth
Email
Gallery ( i will use quickpic)
Google+
Latitude
Local
Messenger
Play Music(will use my own musicplayer)
Talk
Voice Search
Youtube(will use www.youtube.com)
How can I remove them the securest way?
Anything else to free up space?
You can remove most of those. But the safest way to find out is to rename them by adding .bak at the end then reboot. Check for ill side effects and if none, then you can truly delete them. I would keep downloads and a few others I saw you print. Anything that can be installed from market can be removed.
Sent from my EVO using xda premium
Ok. Anyone done this before and now which I should delete?
Can I just rename those under /system/app/ ?
Removing apps is always a decent option to free up space. Just be careful. I would also recommend investing in an otg cable. Using thumbdrives or external self powered hard drives is a great option. Putting my 1Tb drive to work with it soon.
Sent from My SKYICS powered, iPhone killing, i727 death machine.
Before removing anything, you should do a nandroid backup. Then move that to a safe place off the device.
That way, if you mess something up, you can get it back.
OTG works great for storage, you just can't use it for app installation and usage. Photos and videos work well from it though you have to deal with something sticking out of your device.
You might also consider one of the WiFi devices (like Kingston Wi-Drive) which will give you similar to OTG without having something plugged in all the time.
Yeah, first thing I did was a nandroid backup
I tried rename some of the apps under /system/app to *.bak, and did a reboot, but they are still in my apps?
I have to order a OTG cable, to store media on! Will this work for a 8GB aswell, says only 16 and 32GB? http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-A-Femal...ccessories&hash=item1e70f4ba8c#ht_1628wt_1010
I would strongly suggest against removing downloads.
A great place that I always free app space from is /system/media. You can always generally safely remove ringtones, pictures, wallpapers, live wallpaper app and wallpapers if you're not using them...
Make sure that you're not locally caching google play music songs if you are using play - your stuff won't be available offline, but it also won't take up space.
Sent from my rooted Nexus 7 via xda-developers app.
This us the very reason why I always buy more than I think I need as far as disk space goes. I know Google and Asus were aiming to keep the N7 at a minimum cost but 8gb is useless for a device of this type. In actuality you're only getting a little more than 5gb.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
You might want to see how much space you actually save before going through the trouble. I suspect that most of these apps are a few mb at most.
It doesn't stick out that bad.
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Sent from my Nexus 7 16gb, unlocked, rooted, trinity 7 kernel, stock OS using Tapatalk 2.
everlong81 said:
I got my Nexus 7, just rooted it and thinking of free up some space. Which apps can I remove without damaging the system? Can I remove these without any trouble:
Calendar (i will use Jorte)
Currents
Earth
Email
Gallery ( i will use quickpic)
Google+
Latitude
Local
Messenger
Play Music(will use my own musicplayer)
Talk
Voice Search
Youtube(will use www.youtube.com)
How can I remove them the securest way?
Anything else to free up space?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can safely remove all of the listed apps using Titanium Backup. But I do believe that Latitude and Local are part of the Google Maps app and that will have to go if you want the two gone.
If you go to settings / storage you can peek around and see what's taking up most space.
Also android assistant can help you mass cleanup your caches - use with care.
Like above posters said everything on Google play can be smoothly uninstalled or reinstalled if you please.
Sent from my Nexus 7 16gb, unlocked, rooted, trinity 7 kernel, stock OS using Tapatalk 2.
Have a look at cyanogenmod wiki, there's a nice list
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
removing system apps wont free up any space in your storage/app partition. itll free up space in the system partition which wont help you with what you want. theres already lots of space in the system partition. just to let you know.
Please ignore my post.
About OTG
Is it possible to put my games on USB drive? I have Modern Combat 4, Fifa 12, Real Racing.
Hey everybody,
So, I recently bought a Samsung 64gb SD card for my i9505 to put music on, but I'm running into some troubles with it.
Basically, all the music copies over fine, but it corrupts once I try to play it.
I have tried copying it from my iTunes library via iSyncr, via Easy Tunes Sync, as well as just drag and drop. I have converted them when the phone asks me to (I have tried both, converted and non-converted).
I have tried both in the regular Samsung Music player, as well as PlayerPro (the player I use normally). To give you an idea, here is what the files look like before I try to play the music:
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And here's what it looks like AFTER I play:
Another weird thing, is SOME songs work (only artists who start with D through to I - it's not random, JUST that chunk of music plays). If I try to play in Music app, it just skips the track. If I try in PlayerPro, I get 'Sorry, this audio file could not be played in the player'. Weird thing is, they're all mp3s, no DRM.
I've done some searching around and some people have suggested clearing data in the Media Storage app, but I've tried that and it doesn't work for me.
Has anyone got any ideas that might help?
PS. I'm rooted and running Goldeneye 16.2.
Before anyone suggests that it might be the ROM, I doubt it. I came from CyanogenMod 4.3 and the issue was happening there as well (I thought maybe switching back to a Sammy ROM might help)
The only other option I really have left is to get rid of root and go back to pure stock I don't really want to do that but I can't keep streaming all my music, it's wrecking my data usage =\
What format ? (the card)
MistahBungle said:
What format ? (the card)
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It's FAT32 - when formatting the drive I've been using the 'default' option for formatting in CWM Recovery.
I also have the option to use exFat or NTFS.
OK. Does the custom kernel you're running support NTFS ? (stock doesn't). If it does, try formatting the card NTFS, put your music on & see what happens. If you're not running one that does support it, try one that does. And yeah, you could try exFAT as well I guess.
In saying all that, you're right though. All DRM free mp3's doing that is not normal. Next step after that is trying another card.
MistahBungle said:
OK. Does the custom kernel you're running support NTFS ? (stock doesn't). If it does, try formatting the card NTFS, put your music on & see what happens. If you're not running one that does support it, try one that does. And yeah, you could try exFAT as well I guess.
In saying all that, you're right though. All DRM free mp3's doing that is not normal. Next step after that is trying another card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm running Talexop kernel which is built off stock, and it doesn't say anything about NTFS so I'm guessing its a no go.
Do you have any recommendations for a solid NTFS kernel?
Don't use it personally, first page of kernel threads/XDA search is your best bet.
MistahBungle said:
Don't use it personally, first page of kernel threads/XDA search is your best bet.
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Tried ExFat, no luck. Though on ExFat it does something different. MORE of the songs play, but some artists are missing completely. There is no consistency with the problems I'm experiencing.
EDIT: Tried a SanDisk card instead of the Samsung one - worked fine. Guess Samsung hardware doesn't play nice with Samsung hardware?
Really ?? Yeah, that's a real case of WTF !? (two bits of manufacturer's kit not playing nice with each other). At least you got it sorted eventually
I posted this in another thread but thought it might be generally helpful as the "unrooted" deal with the external storage limitations of 4.4...
Geordie Affy said:
@BarryH_GEG could I tranfer lets say a film from Internal Storage to SDCard on KitKat??
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The work-around to getting pretty much anything to external SD is Samsung's My Files. The challenge is moving huge files, that or moving a lot of files simultaneously that are collectively huge. There might not be enough free space on your internal storage to get the files on to your device. Here's a couple of ways of getting files directly to external storage. Like everyone else I'm not thrilled with the new external SD card restrictions but there are ways to accomplish pretty much anything. The only thing I haven't found a work around for is syncing. I ended up moving a bunch of apps and files to external storage so I could move my sync folders to internal storage.
You can setup a two-window instance of My Files and drag-and-drop content directly from Dropbox to External SD.
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You can also use Samsung Link to transfer files from another Samsung device, a PC, or a cloud service (Dropbox, OneDrive, Box) directly to external storage. IMHO, Samsung Link is one of the most overlooked features Samsung provides. It's fantastic for managing and viewing files across devices. For example, I can take a picture with my Gear which transfers it to my N3. I can view, edit, and share the pic from my N10.1-14 or PC seconds later. Anyway, here's a screen shot of it.
One of the great features of Samsung Link is that all registered devices are available to all other registered devices whether or not they're on the same Wi-Fi network. It even works over 3/4G. When devices are on the same network they have root access to each other. When they're not they have access to up to 10 user-specified folders or directories.
Another Possible Workaround for SD Card Files
This might be a work around for some users that have different files on your sd card. If you hook up your tablet to a computer (I used Windows 7) with the provided usb cable, Windows will see your device both the internal and external card. You can create folders through your pc and simply put your different files in the folders, for example for pdf's you could make a folder pdf then put all your pdf's into the folder, you can even drag and drop on the computer. I did that with a bunch of mp3's I had. I then used ES File Explorer to navigate to the folder on my tablet and all the files were available and worked properly. Might not be for everyone but I hope it helps for some users with the Kit Kat limitations.
It might be useful to note that the stock browser can also download files directly to the SD card in any folder you want.
Sent from my SM-P600 using Tapatalk