Gallery is not showing most of my photos even though they are there on the phone

[Geoff_Hailz]

I have been using Gallery for many years with no problem. Currently I have an S20. Yesterday  something very strange happened. Most (95 out of 98) of my folders  have disappeared from Gallery, and all the photos in "my camera" between February and October are not showing either, but earlier ones are. The strange thing is that the photos are actually there on the phone.  I can see them, and open them, with MyFiles.

I have tried everything I have seen suggested and can possibly think of - I've done oads of restarts, I've deleted the Apps cache and data, I tried Safe Mode, and checked the Updates are current. I copied in  a new folder (which did not show, although a new photo did show up in Camera).  I have loaded another photo app from Playstore, and this shows everything fine, so there is no issue of  a .nomedia  file, or disc corruption or anything.

Basically, since the photos are all physically there, I feel that I need to do something like uninstall and reinstall Gallery. But is that possible?

[AustinMc]

Hi and welcome to the Samsung UK and EU forums.

I suppose it's possible that the files have, for whatever reason, moved from a directory that the gallery app recognizes. Are they still there? If you go to My Files > Internal Storage > DCIM, are they still there? Or do they only appear when you click on images?

[Geoff_Hailz]

HI - and thanks for replying. However, I can definitely say that the files are all still there  and have not moved. They are picked up by the new "gallery" app I loaded (Aves), so I have discounted any problem with my phone storage.  Strangest still, although it is not showing most of my folders completely,   Gallery is showing some of the photos in  the "My Camera" folder   but not all of them.   It shows everything up to February, but nothing since.  (but the photos are definitely there)

[AustinMc]

It sounds like a very strange issue. May I suggest uploading them to Google Photos and redownloading them to see if that solves your issue?

[Geoff_Hailz]

Strange !  It's driving me nuts!!!   I tried your suggestion of downloading back from Google Photos - but still no joy.  Aves Gallery is showing everything fine, so I dont think its the  storage media or the photos themselves. I just dont understand why deleting the data and the cache isnt forcing Gallery to re-index everything

[AndrewL]

@Geoff_Hailz: If you open the Gallery app, select the 'Albums' tab, then tap on 'View all' in the top right corner, are your missing albums visible here? If not, try heading to Settings > Apps > Gallery > Permissions > Photos and videos, and set this to 'Always allow all' to see if this helps. 

[Geoff_Hailz]

"View All" only shows the same two folders - my incomplete Camera folder and a new folder I added about 2 weeks ago - none of the older ones at all.   The Permissions are all fine.

But the My Camera saga is getting even stranger. Yesterday, I took a series of 10 photos - and just after they had been taken, they were all visible in Gallery.  That evening ( six hours later) 5 of the 10 were showing just white and empty, the other 5 were ok. This morning, NONE of them were visible in Gallery at all - not even as white boxes - they just didnt show.  But, checking with MyFiles and on a USB connection, the photos are still there - and viewing OK - but just not showing in Gallery.  What on earth is going on??????

If it wasnt for the fact that the files are still there and readable by other apps, I would have said it was a hardware problem.  But it is only Gallery that is affected - and  this vanishing over time is something that I have never seen before - ever!

[Geoff_Hailz · Accepted solution]

OK - i'm the OP, so I'll shut this down now.  I have taken the nuclear option, and done a factory reset.  Hated having to, as it has taken ages to get everything back, but there you are.

As far as I can see it was an app fault of Gallery, but I will never know. - but after the Factory reset, it is working now as I expected.

Hugely disappointed with Samsung that I could not simply uninstall and re-install Gallery. I'm sure that was all that was needed - but I had to nuke the phone to do that.   Ah Well!