Android privacy ROM >> iOS

Don't forget "This file has already been downloaded, do you want to download it again?"

And the options are to cancel or download again but you can't open the already existing file from the prompt, so you might as well just download that fucking PDF for the fifth time since it's not as if you knew where the bloody thing's been downloaded anyway!

Click the name. It doesn't look like an option, because there are buttons for download or cancel, but the file name is also a link to the file.
- It links to a file with that name. There have been times where I download a pdf and click the name only for my phone to open a different pdf than the one I was supposed to be downloading. Turns out they both had the same name.
- Yeah if I ever come across this experience, I just click on the name of the file that I already downloaded. Comes up and no need for redownloading.
- Nope, not on my Pixel 7 using Chrome
you guys don't simply have a folder called "Downloads" where everything goes?
- I have a Downloads folder where some things go. :(
- Yeah, where I've got a shit load of files that, the first time, automatically download with their default name which is usually a bunch of random letters.pdf, it's quicker to just download it again than to find it!
- Yes, that's exactly how the two android phones I've used have worked, and why this post is getting upvoted is a mystery to me.
  
  There are also folders called "Camera" and "Screenshots", and I'll give you three guesses where photos and screenshots go.
- Everything does not go there, different file types seem to go to different places. Successful downloads don't ever appear sometimes.
- Some apps save to their internal storage; /data/data/funny.app.name or /storage/emulated/0/Android/funny.appp.name. It would be funny if not for wanting to cry.
  
  Btw, why not just mount internal storage to /Internal, user home /storage/emulated/0 to /home/ and external to /sdcard1 /sdcard2 /otg, @google?
This made me laugh more than the meme. Thanks.
Annoys me every time. But as I remember you could click on the file and open it on older android systems.
- Still works for me on current phone
- Someone told me what the issue was, settings > downloads > turn off the "ask where to download" option

Have you checked your "Downloads"-folder?

I'm just checking this meme instead
Not always, though. Some apps save images to /Pictures, and in there, some of them make their own folder. It really is kinda half baked.
- Sometimes it's their own folder in their own sandboxed app directory. A lot of apps do that now to avoid permissions issues. Like the GBA emulator I use no longer puts game saves in the user's root directory so you can't even see them without a USB connection to a PC, and even if you do that it's extreme obfuscated.
- if it's images you're looking for, have you checked your gallery? if an app saves an image in a way it doesn't show up in your gallery, get a better app cuz that one sucks
where exactly is the downloads folder?
- /storage/emulated/0/Download
  
  that's what total commander told me
- Who the fuck knows.
- In your phone. Just like how your computer has things in the C drive.
- I just run Files and the Downloads folder is listed there under Categories.
- On Android it's in the root folder. So basically if you just open any file explorer app, it should be on the first screen. The equivalent to the "C" drive or "My Computer" on Windows.
- File manager --> Local storage (usually accessible through some hamburger or three dot menu) --> Emulated --> Downloads (usually in the root of the emulated storage)
Ever since like android 11 nothing saves in my download folder anymore on the SD card I have inserted.

Everything gets saved deep in the android subdirectory, and then somewhere in a folder named loosely after the app that downloaded it, where the app has made ANOTHER folder to put the file.

And then you can’t even move it with a third party folder app. It’s gotten so annoying lately I’d swear they just want to kill the SD card from android completely.
- On my Android 13 device browsers save in sd card/Android/data/com.my.browser. This folder can only be accessed on the default, hidden file manager or on a PC. Not even read-only access, but straight up nothing. At this point I just don't bother directly downloading to my sd card anymore, I just download to internal storage and move it all to sd card/Downloads every so often
What, Downloads/04gd8365he.pdf?

Let's not talk about the iPhone file explorer lol.

There is one?
- There’s literally a thing you can click on called, get this…
  
  FILES
  
  It’s where all of the files on the device live, at least non-photo/video files.
- Yes.
I was told iphones don't even use files.
- As a unixy based OS it is all files
- Apple loves lying to its users.
- Files as an implementation detail, sure. But my general impression of iOS is that it tries really hard to avoid exposing users to the existence of a file system.
If anyone wants an actual answer: iPhone has an option to “Save to Files” that lets you select a folder to save to just like on a desktop OS. I’ve personally never lost a file when I do this.

This is turning a generation of people tech illiterate. The young people I interact with are smart because they're all employed by a tech company and mentored by us dinosaurs, but I've heard some horror stories of the tech literacy of the average young person.

Touchscreen was a mistake.

I'm an IT teacher at a community centre, I genuinely never thought I would see the day when a student younger than me enrolled. I wrongly assumed my role as a public educator would just fade out as younger generations required generally less training around computers.

Obviously courses in disability service centres would remain, and accredited training for people to kick off or retarget their careers would still exist.

But the person at the local library who meets twice a week and teaches grandma how to close the tabs on her phone felt like a job that was destined to die.

I'm in my 30s and this year I have a few teenagers in my class. The conversations are hilarious, they don't know how to read a file location adreess or open a program that isn't pinned to the taskbar, but at the same time, I don't know how to access the notifications bar on an iPhone or quickly find the wifi settings without going through general settings....because I went from windows to 98, to a blackberry, to an Android, just like they went from an ipad toddler to an iPhone teen, and only now are they having Windows 11 thrown at them, and of all the computers to try and learn to use, this wouldn't be my first recommendation (but it's what our government funds us to teach 🤷‍♀️)

The skill divide is so hard to explain too. My elderly students just stare blankly at one screen, overwhelmed and confused, unsure how to recognise anything. Nothing stands out as a link, or a click able button, because the entire visual landscape is new to them. There is often a lot of hand holding which can be frustrating especially when you made a huge breakthrough in their confidence and independence only to have come in the next week feeling insecure about their skills because they've forgotten a little bit, or had a bad spam caller over the weekend who made them want to never touch a computer again.

Then the teens, who know what links look like and generally what they do will rush ahead, they may not know what it is exactly they're trying to do, but they think they know what end result is expected and they generally know how to avoid catastrophic issues so they just barrel ahead, I'll see them make 40 clicks a second for something that usually takes 2, because they're throwing spaghetti at the wall.

I had a project last week. Dead simple. Save a linked file to a target location, import the file into another program through either drag and drop or browsing for the file, then change 1 thing, and export the final file into another target location, as specified on the activity sheet.

Barely 5 minutes in, I'm still helping Brenda get her mouse dongle plugged in, and one of the teens is finished. And yes, they have every file I asked for, and every edit I asked for, but both are just sitting in the downloads folder. And now we're at the end looking back, the teen is confused because they have the edited file that is required to "finish*, how is it wrong, and I'm trying to explain why skipping the steps about target locations means they'll have to start again because this activity is all about target locations and I don't actually give two shits about this file I just need them to put things in and out of a folder until they can explain to me "a folder is a container" and not just stare into space because a folder is a black hole on their phone things they save go to until they need them again and just download them again.
- Stuff like that are infuriating. I'm in high school and there's an animation class.
  
  The teacher has very clearly told the class about a million times to save the files in OneDrive/2024/Animation/
  
  People are still saving it in downloads or documents or somewhere else and then saying they forgot where they saved it and did nothing the whole class.
- I’m a Millenial, and it’s been wild to see how i’m basically near the top of the bell curve when it comes to understanding the basics of using computers. Like you, I thought general computer illiteracy would die with the Boomers… but here we are.
- Nothing stands out as a link, or a click able button, because the entire visual landscape is new to them.
  
  That's because modern UI designers are all about form over function. UI rules were worked out 40 years ago with the first gui's. But you don't get a promotion for maintaining code. So everyone has to do something different to get noticed.
  
  So now we have UI's where interactive and non interactive elements are mixed without any visual distinction.
For better or worse, we're going the way of "the car guy". It used to be something everyone needed to know a little bit about, but now fades into the background with a handful of experts.
- I'm car guy, IT guy, home maintenance guy, and electronics repair guy.
  
  I learned how to do everything because I'm a cheap ass that won't replace what can be fixed and won't pay to have something be fixed when I can manage it myself.
  
  I got 240,000 miles on a car right now and it's never seen the inside of a shop. Last big screen TV was free because it was broken and then I soldered new LEDS on to fix it. Paid $25 for an $800 dishwasher that just needed disassembling and cleaning. Also $25 for a front load whirlpool washing machine with a broken internal lock mechanism that I repaired. Same for a dryer with bad rollers inside.
  
  People blow way too much money on buying new stuff instead of just learning how to fix and maintain things now. /old man rant
- Damn that's a good way to put it.
- As long as the non-experts somehow manage to make a living to pay for our expertise. I heard a coworker vent about her son who wants to drop out of school (assuming elementary / middle) to focus on his streaming career...
Touch input isn't the problem. Hiding the file system is.
- Yup. I teach at a university. It used to be adequate for instructions to say something along the lines of
  
  open the file C://Folder/anotherfolder/subfolder/document.ext
  
  I encounter more and more students every year that have no idea how to do this.
To be fair, Android is absolutely atrocious whenever files are involved.
- Had and have magnitudes of more problems with file management on iOS; it has improved a bit with a basic native file browser.
Yes, this is much worse than when a bunch of old people were upset when young people didn’t know how to use a telegraph/party line/rotary dial/gramophone/touchtone/turntable/fax/dialup modem/cassette deck/etc. Because now it’s happening now, and back then it was happening then.
- The difference is all that stuff went away, traditional desktop computers aren't going anywhere. Sure, you can probably manage fine at home with just a phone, but not in a lot of jobs.
- Your phone is measuring time by counting how many seconds has passed since 1970-01-01 00:00 UTC. Doesn't matter if you're on android or apple, the OS is based on ideas of Bell Labs people's ideas from the 1960's.

It’s either in /sdcard/Downloads or /external/emulated/0/android/data/com.google.chrome/Downloads. Couldn’t be easier.

chrome instead of anything besides that

🤢🤮
- com.microsoft.iemobile
Couldn’t be easier.

Would certainly be easier if there wasn't an or in your statement.
- Best I can do is three more ors.
Except when it is not....

For example Boost saves photo is some photo folder somewhere.

The only way i can find anything is using a photo app and scanning my entire phone to find things.
- I was being facetious. Yeah, every app saves into a different location. It’s bonkers.
- Boost saves in /Pictures/Boost.
- Don't you pick on first run?
  
  It's a newer api but I know Sync does that, as well as mgit and a few others.
oh yeah? now list paths for all the other applications
- You have other applications?

file - downloads

me: /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/org.mozilla.firefox/files/Download or /storage/3564-3130/Android/data/org.mozilla.firefox/files/Download here I come!

POV: you let udisks2 automount your drive for you.

Android has ways for app devs to specify where files get saved. App devs just usually don't give a shit, because they want to write a single lowest common codebase for android and iOS.

Developers not bothering with Android features because they don't exist on iOS is both infuriating and gives me IE6 era vibes.
- IE6 era vibes
  
  But… this is a nearly opposite situation, no? Microsoft added a bunch of their own shit with no attempt at standardization, and instead of simply not using those features, a ton of websites started making IE a hard requirement.

ITT: people who have no working knowledge of file system navigation complain about the lack of such knowledge

honestly it's not this, is just the fact that android puts so much shit in between you and whatever you're trying to do.

The concept of downloading a file is simple, it's courtesy to tell you where it downloads at the very least. Android doesnt exactly have the most sane of defaults.

dont get me wrong, im a linux user, im a certified power user, even i can't stand android.
- It's easier to just redownload the file at points. I think I got like 6 copies of the same utility bill on my mobile because it was easier.

It's the dumbest setup possible with how android handles saved files, and even worse by all the hoops to put files or look at files from specific folders on your phone due to all the permissions crap.

But the easiest way to find where something was saved is to open up "Files" which is "Files by Google" to be exact. It will whatever file you saved or modified right there in the "recent" section at the top so you can look at whatever goofball place it was actually saved to.

I really don’t understand why the whole finder/explorer/dolphin way of doing things wasn’t carried over to phones.

I’ve only really used Apple phones, but that was something that shocked me right away.

Back when I jailbroke my phones (before I got lazy) I had an awesome file explorer with the finder icon that made me feel at home for a bit.

Isn't the opposite?

Saving in downloads on Android doesn't need additional storage permissions, so apps will save in the big "trash can" downloads folder

Instead, who the fuck knows where iOS saved that file, where every app is sandboxed and isolated

The worst is when an android app is clearly an iOS port. E.g Patreon app saves all files under a generic name rather than the one you get when saving the same file from a browser, because I guess on iOS it just goes into your camera reel without a filename anyway. Or how Bluesky app just straight up says "saved to your camera reel" and puts it in your DCIM folder, with no option to specify a different location.
- The worst is when an android app is clearly an iOS port.
  
  This always means there are zero settings. If there's no way of configuring the app, I find an alternative. There are few things more frustrating than software that assumes one size fits all.
True, the folder is pretty easy to find and always the same.

Although the big problem is how quickly that folder can get messy.

Mine is filled with so much pdf files that i never want to sort, sometimes there's duplicates because i didn't want to scroll to find the first one so i downloaded it a second time.
IOS has a files app where saved files go

Basically the same as your download directory
- Yeah lol I love how this commenter is mad about apps being sandboxed. There’s a downloads folder in the files app, or apps can have their own virtual filesystems, also accessible within the files app. Stupid iOS and ensuring that apps can’t just write to wherever they want on the filesystem
- Unfortunately, any save prompt using it often defaults to iCloud shit.

It's in Recents

Recents isn’t really a location, but a summary.
It's never in Recents. Recents is utterly useless unless you're using one of the Google apps, and even then it's unreliable.
- cx file explorer. u welcome
*It's often in Recents

Mostly

/storage/emulated/0/Download

or symlink

/sdcard/Download

First android I ever had was a Galaxy S2. Goddammit that phone was so nice. I even bought a 2nd one when the first one died. But android file trees are way easier to navigate than iOS.

There's a app called files that takes you to your saved storage, it's not even difficult
- And Fossify File Manager if you don't want to deal with Google.

https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/name.lmj001.savetodevice/ I just use share option and select this app it just saves where ever u want...

It is so stupid that this app is needed, and so useful.

I feel like this meme only makes sense for people who don't know basic file system navigation...

Literally never had this problem, not once, starting at Android 2.3 when I got my first android phone. It's literally just files and folders, like any other OS.

Even when dealing with apps that don't have a way to check where a file is, any file manager app worth a damn, will have a way to easily find the most recently saved/modified files.

So I had a problem with this, and I am a cd.. cd/ format . person who loves computer file systems.

I think what messed me up is that certain apps have different default save folders, and I wouldn't know where they were or forget.
- This ☝️
  
  And when your storage is full from videos and gifs that friends exchange in WhatsApp or whatever, or Instagram keeping everything you post, and you want to clean up, there's no easy way to do it.
- A given program having a default save location is true on any platform. The "My Documents" folder on windows is used for anything but. So many applications throw files in there it's basically useless.
  
  With Android, application files are kept in application specific locations, while user files basically always end up in Download or Pictures, sometimes, rarely, Documents. DCIM for system camera photos.
  
  If you need to clear an applications files, that can be done via that apps page in settings.
  
  The only difference I can see is that on phones, default file system behaviour is designed so that it gets out of most people's way, while those of us who know how it works can still use a file explorer app just fine.
  
  While normies rely on the default file picker showing a monolithic list of what's on their phones in chronological order, we don't have to. When that thing appears, you can find any file management apps installed from the hamburger menu, and find your files using them instead.
Gen Z Kids Apparently Don't Understand How File Systems Work
- Sorta makes sense.
  
  It’s like my generation not knowing how to fix cars because our fathers all did it.
- some of them really don't, but people in my circle (all of them gen z) are familiar to a degree. many of them use android phones and/or windows, which very much require that if you want to do anything useful.
I had a photo on my Galaxy I needed to delete, I had to delete it from three separate folders.

Is that a Samsung problem, not an Android problem?

Almost certainly, I for one don't remember having to do it that on my Pure, but you can bet I was pretty pissed at everyone involved anyways.
- my opinion might be biased as someone who deliberately avoids samsung products because of horrible software and bad quality control (on some devices).
  
  yes, that's a samsung thing.
- Delete it all you like, if you run Google photos, it will still end up stuck in there.
Hey did you work with any of the fuchsia people who got laid off? Do you know if the project is planned to be cancelled any time soon?
- ?
  
  No, and I've no clue.

Most (all?) Iapps save images in /Pictures/[appname]

Photos taken with the camera are stored in a subfolder under/DCIM/ for example /DCMI/camera.

All my downloaded files end up in /Downloads/

The path to downloads is technically /storage/emulated/0/Downloads

But that doesn't really ever matter because /storage/emulated/0/ is treated as root in at least the two file explorers I have.

If I mount another storage device it will probably be mounted in some weird path, but too don't matter since file browsers will hide that.

The only time it matters for me is when using termux. The home directory has some weird ass path (/data/data/com.termux/files/home) when using termux which can make it annoying to transfer files. BUT Android storage gets mounted as ~/storage/emulated/0/. So transferring files from downloads to termux home, is as simple as cp ~/storage/emulated/0/downloads/file.txt ~/

Accessing the files from an app is very annoying and complicated, and that's if not completely restricted.

Accessing the dirs you often need is very easy

whqt does emulated here mean
- It's an emulated FAT SD card for compatibility. Android uses a Linux file system with file permissions and modern features, but exposes it as a fake (emulated) FAT SD card.

My next phone will be a linux phone, my current one would be if I didn’t get it for free

Nice, be sure to make a post about how it goes!
Your best bet is to find something that runs droidian.

Runs android first, but you can install Linux.

I know where my saved files go.

It's not that hard to figure out actually.

Would anyone know where wallpapers are stored? I took a picture with an older phone (Oneplus 6) and used it as such. I upgraded to Nothing Phone 1 and I am using it as wallpaper because it copied when migrating but I cannot find anywhere for the life of me!

If it was using a version of android, photos are usually stored in DCIM folders either on your phone's internal storage or more likely on the SD card.
- Not there. At this point I don't think it is a "camera" picture anymore but rather a system or custom wallpaper.

It's pretty relatable. A lot of apps like to use their own folders, like my lemmy app.
If I download files from my banking app they get saved to root (sdcard), most others save to my Download folder. Then there is DCIM where I have photos, but Telegram does not care, for Signal I have to export each file to the file system seperately.

The worst thing though is that the files in Downloads/ are ordered A-Z by default. No idea if this is a LineageOS thing, but it drives me crazy.

for Signal I have to export each file to the file system seperately

To be fair, files being isolated inside of Signal is the whole point
- And it's a good thing too!

Still an issue for me. I've switched to Voyager for visiting Lemmy but I still haven't found the pictures I've saved.

Mine savea in internal storage and then folder Pictures.

On an unencrypted sd card that is removable.

android is actually such a fucking mess, dont even get me started.

WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT .nomedia FILES WERE A GOOD IDEA? WHO, WHICH ONE OF YOU WAS IT?

i would genuinely rather use linux on my phone, and im not even joking, android is just the worst.

.nomedia files are fairly standard across applications on Android and Linux. Nextcloud and other applications will use them to know not to scan that forlder with automation, thumbnail creation, ml, etc. Its a simple and standard signal. It follows the .file convention so it should be hidden when not browsing with hidden files on.
- i have never seen a .nomedia file on linux, not once in the 4 years i've been daily driving it. Nextcloud might use it? Idk i host my services like a true linux user (fully self hosted) so i don't have to deal with shitty software.
  
  Regardless it's still just not a good format. It's standard in the sense that it's a .nomedia file, i suppose, that doesn't mean the implementation is going to be standard, or that it will even adhere to it at all.
  
  It being hidden when browsing itself is a UI concern itself. Can't wait for that to be confusing.
  
  It just seems highly fragile to have the filesystem itself tell an application maybe what to be doing with those files. I'd much rather have it be based on any other form of data structure.
What's so bad about it? I use it to keep my mangá folder out of the gallery app.
- for starters. The fact that i had to google it to figure out what it was. Let alone randomly discover that it exists in a tangentially related search. It is an ASTRONOMICALLY inaccessible feature to someone who isn't readily invested into android.
  
  secondarily, it should be done in the gallery, obviously. That just MAKES sense. The place where you are shown pictures, should also be the place where it lets you ignore more pictures. If you want to use .nomedia as a backend for that? Fine, Document it at atleast.
  
  It's also just, weird... The gallery app only seems to consider a few folders existing at any state. Some better than others, i have no idea what drives the logic behind it. But you can nest them, super easily, which definitely won't cause any issues. If you have a single folder you do want to show, but 9 that you don't, you need 9 no media files, because that's convenient apparently.
  
  I mean really any other system would've been better, a directory list, a file table, a database, literally anything that lets you mark it interactively. Having a single HIDDEN file, determine the state of an entirely independent app is just next level hackery. You really shouldn't ever do that. It's just fundamentally bad design philosophy. It'd be like a lightswitch on the opposite side of your home, preventing your garage door from opening.
- Latest example I ran into is on android TV you cannot change your dns settings in wifi config. On regular android you can. I had to spend a couple hours fiddling with my routers networking (I was doing some weird routing for a specific network that android TV is on with a VPN tun only for that network). And if it just had the ability to change the dns settings to a static value I wouldn't of had to do that. Why would they do that?

Isnt that the fault of some apps which doesn't show where the file is? Or does android itself doesnt show it when you save it using system app??

This is going off my memory of an explanation I read a while ago, so I could be off on the fine details, but I believe it's one of those things that devs do indeed have the option to do, the vast majority are just lazy as shit (I'm well aware this is likely a management decision, not he individual devs themselves in most cases) and don't want to add anything that wouldn't be useful on both android and ios

That's a helluva run-on sentence but I'm too lazy to fix it.

You can usually see this as a notification - and tapping on that notification should open the file, wherever it is. As for the specific location, I'd expect it to be /storage/emulated/0/Download most of the times.

In the Downloads or Pictures folder , under the name of the application. I am shocked that this isn't common knowledge.

Android 14 :/

Dont even try when it comes to torrent downloads. They go into a top secret location only the torrent app knows of.

Have you looked into Android/com.torrentapp.name/files?
- Too logical 😠
- Just found torrent client "BiglyGT" on f-droid. It can download to random folder on sdcard through SAF (Storage access framework).
Just use termux and rtorrent, turning android into a linux terminal is the best

Now try it on an iPhone

Or OneDrive.

File > Save As > Desktop.

Doesn't save to local Desktop, but the OneDrive desktop wherever the fuck that is.
- This is why I say that Windows is not user friendly. People just got trained to put up with it.
Just did.

It went right to the “Saved on my iPhone” section of the Files app.

I'm not sure where things are on any device other than desktops tbh

Yes

I know! It's saved in [DEFAULT FOLDER]

Google's files app really helps with this

It's sacrificed to our AI overlords.

Never had the problem, strange. Using Total Commander as file manager, just don't use the stupid ones, I guess, idk.

sudo rm rf /*

I find the Files app (from Google) helps me manage what files I have where on my phone. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.nbu.files

I recommend Material Files from f-droid, it seems more barebones, but is superior in terms of functionality, especially for power-users and rooted devices (also available in the Play Store)
As far as I know Files was preinstalled on my Moto G phone.
- It's so bad that it even can't remember file sorting options.