Hi,
I am looking for something like a “user manual” for the gallery app. I have FP Open OS 18.04 and to my understanding, the gallery app is Android standard.
I have learned that I can block the content of a folder by creating a file .nomedia in it
But is there a way to have a structured view? I always take to time to arrrange my images in a (kind of) hierarchical folder structure, like [name of an event] at top level and [year] at next level and so on.
The problem is that gallery tries to display all folders it can find anywhere always on the topmost level, therefore resultiing in numerous folder displays simply named “2018” and “2017” (and older).
When you “walk” my directories like you would on a Windows or Linux desktop, the logic is striking, but when you see many folders with just identical names you have to enter them to find out about them. That is really annoying… Yes, I could rename each and everyone to something like [eventname-year] but that’s a lot of work on 128 GByte…
Yes, I know that there are other apps that do a better job. I could install them, but I cannot get rid of gallery. So when I lend my phone to a friend, he or she is sure to use gallery insted of the better app…
Also on my wishlist would be ways to make folders password protected or just hidden (no real encryption necessary, just an light protection against “accidental” viewing).
I am using perfect viewer as I never liked gallery. Actually I don’t have a need for something more fancy as I hardly take photos with the phone.
But my girlfriend faced all these struggles you have mentioned.
I know that you have explicitly pointed out not wanting to install any third party app. But as I think gallery is quite crappy you should not waste your precious time for finding a manual.
I got simple gallery installed on my girlfriends mobile and now she is much more satisfied with it than she ever was with the standard gallery.
As it offers plenty of settings to configure its behavior and provides most of the missing features of the standard gallery app.
We consider this as a very good replacement app.
The standard app can be forced to stop and I believe the simple in the name can be dealt with by anyone.
I do not oppose using something better than Gallery, my problem is more that I cannot get rid of Gallery, I can’t even hide it (Btw, I do not understand why this is the case with Fairphone Open OS, since it’s Google free, why don’t they allow us to disable or delete unwanted apps? I have exactly the same problem with Mail, which I never use, because I have K-9…).
Oh, and the reason why I am seeking a user manual for Gallery: It could well be that it does have the funcionality I want, but possibly it is simply undocumented. Like the feature to hide an entire folder by creating a file with the “magic” filename .nomedia. I cannot find a user manual anywhere on the internet ?!? Sometimes computing magazines write a “tipps &tricks” article, or some blogger mentions a feature, but no real comprehensive manual…
Some other user just recently made a statement about that.
So there is hope.
Maybe there is a user manual available on specific Android pages since it is a default Android app.
I think documentation is still a major lack these days, who likes to write plenty of pages summing up several MBs of data.
Btw. if features were provided in a simple form of external text based configuration files this would rather not speak positive for having a “smart” device these days. There may be exceptions e.g. .nomedia, but adjusting simple behavior such as file sorting etc. should be implemented as on/off setting in any app…which is no problem for the recommended simple g…
I have to correct myself on one of those points. A couple of days ago I learned that I can hide apps by going into the settings dialog and disabling them, which also leads to not starting them. In the case of gallery that works for me (simple gallery does it for me. I have no idea why the author calls it simple, it is quite the contrary: very feature rich and can do many tricks the stock app cannot do, and It open source, F-Droid. Maybe because it is still easy to use…).
