Smartphones are increasingly aimed at lasting us longer. For this reason, some brands have made changes in their update policies to offer us more years with the latest version of the system and more security patches. However, some versions of its operating system, such as Android 11, have a memory problem that could spoil the fact of enjoying a phone over time.
As several users are discovering, a failure begins to appear in all those users who are to take many images and record a good number of videos, since Android has a limit of 10,000 photos and video clips, from which it is impossible to continue saving more files in gallery.
An error that has nothing to do with the storage of the device itself, since those affected still have enough space. However, there are also many other users who have had to suffer a sudden error in the gallery of their phones that prevents them from storing their multimedia files, and even those that they receive from instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp.
The photos I take are not saved
All the alarms began to appear when, in the terminals of various brands among which we have seen Sony and Samsung phones, a problem had started to occur when trying to save both clips and images. A fairly repeated bug in Android 11 , among other versions, but that does not appear by itself in the customization layers.
This inconvenience does not show us any error or alert message and that is why we can continue using the mobile camera without any problem. The problem will be that once we access the gallery, none of the photos or videos will have been stored and we will lose them forever without the possibility of recovering them.
This problem has affected different smartphone manufacturers, especially it has spread to Sony and Samsung smartphones, who already confirmed at the time that they were working on an update that will prevent more users from suffering from this error in the future. In case this failure has not seemed to you, you may not have to do anything more than update the mobile, but if you are suffering you will have to fix them in the following ways that we will explain later.
Do they look on the computer?
One of the most repeated facts is that they will not appear in the smartphone’s own gallery, while the phone’s storage continues to be ‘full’. This means that the culprit is the Android reel, so if we connect the phone to a computer, we will probably be able to view the multimedia content that we have stored on our smartphone without any problem.
They are stored in a microSD
Another of the most repeated failures is that they are not stored as such on the reel, because they are housed in the SD cards that we have inserted in mobile phones. Therefore, it is best to turn off the device, remove this accessory, and then reinsert it into the terminal. If after turning on the smartphone they still do not appear in the gallery, this card may have stopped working, so we will have to try to format it and use it again. Anyway, connect your smartphone and try to recover the photos and videos that have been stored inside it before resetting it.
WhatsApp photos are not saved
The instant messaging application WhatsApp is one of the best known, although not the only one, since there is also Telegram, even so, this first option allows us to make the decision to save or not the multimedia files that we receive through it. As it happens in other similar apps.
Therefore, we must review the application’s own settings in order to confirm that it is properly configured, that is, that we have enabled the option that allows the software to save the images and clips that we receive through these apps that we have in Android.
To do this, the first thing we will do is open WhatsApp, access the settings of the Facebook application by clicking on the three points in the upper right corner, and enter the chat options. Once we are inside, we will find the option that will allow us to view the files within the tool of our phone where all the images we have are stored.
In the case of Telegram , another of the most famous, we must go to its Settings> Chats> activate the option to Save in gallery . In this way, we will also ensure that the captures appear on the Android mobile reel.
All solutions
If you have this problem on your phone that has the Google operating system, these are some of the ways you can fix this failure forever. Or at least find a faster way before your smartphone manufacturer releases an update to correct this error.
The ‘Sec Media Storage’ bug
To try to make the mobile gallery allow us to save photos in Android 12 or other versions all our memories, we will only have to follow a process that we have already seen in a similar way on other occasions. We have to go into Settings> Applications and show the system applications, now we look for ‘Sec Media Storage’ and delete the cache and storage data within storage. Then, we proceed to restart the mobile and verify that now we can continue to store captures or videos.
In case this does not work or the ‘Sec Media Storage’ app does not even appear, the steps are complicated because we will have to resort to the file manager. We will access the internal memory and then the ‘ DCIM ‘ folder. Before continuing, we recommend that you copy all the photos to another device so as not to accidentally delete them and thus be more calm.
All the folders called ‘XXXANDRO’ should be renamed to for example ‘OLD_XXXANDRO’ with the intention that a new folder is generated that will allow us to continue storing the files. Before taking this for granted, we have to check it manually by taking a photo or video.
Close the app
Although, we do not have to put ourselves in the worst. On many occasions, it is a one-off problem that can be solved by always closing the reel application on our Android phone. So, try closing and opening it after a few seconds. If the failure has been resolved, it was probably a one-time internal software or smartphone error. On the other hand, if they continue to save your photos, you should keep trying the following methods.
Clear data and cache
As much as we try to do, the simplest solution may be just to do a quick clear of the cache and data of this application. This is because too much memory has been stored inside this tool, causing it to act strangely.
Therefore, we must try to go to Settings> Applications and notifications> See the apps> enter the Gallery app> Storage and cache> Clear cache. In addition, you can also delete its storage. But, with the other option it would be enough to solve this problem.
Try another app
It is likely that the error may be in the application itself that does not show us the photos. Therefore, the best way to get out of doubt is to download an alternative gallery to see if the images are displayed correctly.
Within Google Play we have dozens of them, but not all of them are ideal for our Android. Among the ones we recommend the most is Google Photos, although if it is the one that comes standard on your phone, you can try other alternatives such as this free software:
Restart the mobile
If it is not solved with an alternative app, we will have to restart the Android device . Basically, because it could be a specific error of the smartphone, and all because some of the processes that the terminal was executing have been caught, causing this tool to not be able to store the captures and videos on the mobile. Therefore, we will have to restart it with the traditional method.
Update it
Updates are definitely always important. Since, we have seen how on many occasions these patches from the manufacturers fix different known problems of the apps that come standard on their terminals, including the reel. Therefore, we must check in the Settings menu> System updates , that there is no pending for our terminal.
Reset the phone
Now we will only have the last option: Restore the mobile to its factory settings . If it is because of the phone’s software, in this way we will return to the original version with which we took the smartphone out of its box. Of course, we must make sure to make a backup copy of the Android device. After this, we can restore them by going to Settings> System> Reset options> Delete all data (these steps may vary depending on the customization layer of your phone).
