Undo Free up phone space

[Jason18542]

I performed the Free up phone space, but now I want the images back in my phone Gallery

No matter what I do, the images now only appear in the Onedrive folder but not in the samsung synced gallery
I have :
- Unlinked and relinked Microsoft account

- Cleared cache and data

- I cannot uninstall and reinstall as others have suggested as both Onedrive and Gallery are system apps

- Redownloading the images creates new images with altered metadata (date created is all current day)

- Images deleted through "Free up phone space" do not appear in the Bin, They're just... gone

Is there anyway to reset this state?

[xSteveuk]

Hi,
Have you checked Google Photos
To see if photos are there, you can download

[Jason18542]

If you're asking if they're still in Onedrive, then yes, they're still there
It's very frustrating, they're sitting in Onedrive, but I want it with the exact same metadata (I have them arranged by date)
When downloaded, the dates change to today

[xSteveuk]

Not sure if this will work but might be worth a shot

• Unlock your Android device and go to My Files app (or the file manager).

• Tap the three dots icon in the top-right corner and choose Settings. Then, enable Show hidden system files option and return back to the My Files screen.

• Select Image category. Then, tap the Search icon, type nomedia into the bar and tap Search.

• From the results, tap the photo(s) with .nomedia file extension and select the Delete icon from the bottom to remove the file(s).

When all the .nomedia files are removed, go back to your Gallery app and it should now show you all the lost pictures on Android phone.

[keith30]

That's because you freed up your device space. The images are in Onedrive because that is a separate server to the Samsung Gallery, like Google Photo's are because Google run there own servers to back up to. Never free up space without backing them up first separate to the Gallery app.

[Jason18542]

nomedia search result: No results found

[Jason18542]

Do you think reformatting my phone would solve the issue?

I'm not sure if this "saved state" is on my app or on my account.

If its the app, then maybe reformatting might help?

[Moiramon]

Check Google photos if yo have it. Then you can go to Google takeout site. Select photos and then export. You'll get a Gmail message after a bit with links to the zip files with your photos.

[Jason18542]

I have never used Google Photos, so there is no Google Photos backup

[Jason18542 · Accepted solution]

Update:

Reformatting doesn't help

Though I did discover 2 workarounds

1. Android copies images with the "date created" unchanged, so

• Go to [My Files], under [Storage], there is an option to sign into OneDrive
• After signing in and waiting for it to Sync, you can now view OneDrive through [My Files]
• Download/copy images through this and the dates are as the original uploaded images

Con: Extremely unstable and slow sync, you can maybe get individual images, but bulk download is practically impossible

2. Using a Windows PC, go to [Settings] -> [System]

• At the top right, there is an option to sign into OneDrive
• After signing in, you can now view OneDrive through [Windows Explorer] like a local folder (Though they're still online, works similarly to Samsung Gallery sync)
• Right click the folder you want, choose [Always keep on this device]
• Let the images load
• When images are done loading, sign out of OneDrive
• Your downloaded images should remain, with dates as the original uploaded images