A problem that no one wants to encounter is the moment we access our mobile phone and we find that the images that are not in the smartphone gallery. This can cause us to throw our heads and worry, since photos are full of memories and losing them can be very serious. Although, we can always manage to recover the photos in one way or another.
Luckily for us, technology gives us many solutions to problems and there is more than one way to recover them. We are going to give you a series of steps to follow with the intention that the photos return to the place where we left them, making those memories that we gave up for lost, return to where they should be. There are several solutions and different situations that we are going to present, so it is convenient to try all the methods.
They have disappeared alone
The most common thing is that without prior notice the mobile loses access to some files, something that has happened to many users at the most inopportune moment. However, this problem is usually related to a temporary failure, so before trying all the solutions, we recommend that you start by restarting the mobile to see the photos again , which never fails.
Reset the gallery
In some cases the problem is in the gallery application, which may have become saturated and stopped working properly. All mobiles bring their own and on more than one occasion they have presented errors as unexpected as the one that prevents us from seeing photos or videos on the mobile .
The only thing we will have to do to make it work correctly is to start by checking if we have any system or Google Play updates that resolve this error. Otherwise, it will direct us to Settings> Applications and in many cases it will be necessary to touch on the three points in the upper right part to be able to see the system options.
Then it will be a matter of locating the Gallery > Albums and access, to choose Storage and cache. Here we just have to clear the cache and not click on delete storage or then we could lose some of the photos forever. Just by clearing the cache, we will exit the settings and check how the photos are now back in place.
Check the trash
It is possible that we have inadvertently sent the photos to the trash or even an entire folder, but luckily for several years now manufacturers have saved us from losing photos from the mobile with the so-called recycling bin.
We just have to access the gallery and search for this trash can among the albums, from which we can restore the photos before the set time elapses that removes them forever. To recover them, you have to press and hold the deleted photos and then click on the button that brings them back to the gallery.
Blame the SD card
Although the MicroSD are a great help in smartphones that run out of storage, they can also give us scares with the photos in the gallery . With just a slight movement, the memory card will stop showing files and worry will take over.
In this case, the easiest and fastest way is to remove the card, blow into the dedicated space and the card itself to put it back. With this, in most cases the photos are back in the gallery , although there are also situations where the mobile does not recognize the memory card and we are faced with a greater problem, which forces us to test it on a computer to be able to recover files.
Have you hidden the photos?
In the same way that we may have trashed the photographs, we may also have hidden the images and we do not remember it. In this case, all we will have to do is follow some steps similar to those we did to hide them, but in this case with the intention of recovering the hidden photos that we considered lost.
Use a backup
If you had the backup function of Google Photos enabled on your phone, since Google Drive does not store multimedia files in its backups, you can always recover those photos that have disappeared. Although, in other cases, the brand of your smartphone may have its own cloud, allowing you to also make a security backup of the images and videos in your gallery.
Therefore, you only have to restore a recent backup in which all those multimedia files on your phone could appear that have disappeared by magic. That is why you only have to enable the synchronization with Google Photos or your respective cloud so that the images appear on your smartphone again.
For those who use Google Photos, we must go to Google Takeout . Once inside, we must make sure that we are in the account that we use on the mobile where the images have disappeared. Then, we must press Unmark all and select only the Google Photos option. Then, go to the end and click on Next step.
Finally, choose Send download link by email as the delivery method and Export once under Frequency> Create export . Afterwards, you will be able to recover your disappeared photos (as long as you had made a backup copy).
Get them back with an app
Your smartphone may not have a recycling bin, or it has simply disappeared completely. Therefore, we will have to use a Google Play app to have a better chance of recovering the photos. For this case, we will use DiskDigger :
Using it will be very simple, we only have to download it and give it the necessary permission to access the storage of the mobile device. Afterwards, we will have to wait for it to carry out the analysis of the terminal’s memory. Finally, we will only have to search among the entire amount of images for those that had ‘disappeared’ from the phone’s gallery. When you find it, you will have to click on the ‘Recover’ button.
Where are the mobile photos?
After trying all the solutions without success, we must manage to find all the photos, images and videos that have disappeared from the mobile. This leads us to make use of file explorers or the computer, to try to find the photos and return them to the place where they belong. A gallery error, software problem or other causes may have caused the photos to remain on the mobile but they are not accessible from the gallery until we correct it.
We can use a file explorer that we have already installed or use the Files explorer from Google Play. If you don’t have this app, you can always download it for free from the following link:
From here we can access all the files, including those that are not in the gallery due to various errors. We can also connect the mobile phone to the computer through the USB cable and following the path: Mobile > Internal storage > DCIM : we will have access to the photos taken with the mobile to be able to access them and remove them from the device so as not to lose them.
Then it will be advisable to do a factory reset from Settings> System> Reset mobile data and thus correct these errors that are affecting us.
They don’t appear in Google Photos
There are many Android phones that use Google Photos as their official gallery and others who prefer it to be able to save the photos. In any case, if the photos from your mobile do not appear in the Google Photos app, we must bear in mind that it is necessary to activate the copy of some folders that go beyond the photos taken with the mobile and the MicroSD card.
We can do all this by accessing Google Photos and tapping on the profile photo. Then we enter Photo Settings and among the options we access ‘Backup and synchronization’ to be able to choose the folders of the device. You also have to access the ‘Access to the SD card’ in case we use it. So we can safely recover the photos.
WhatsApp photos are not
Among the most popular applications that exist, in addition to being closely related to mobile photos, is the WhatsApp messaging app. From it we have access to an option that allows us to show or not show the photos in the gallery and it can confuse us if we have changed the default option.
To modify it, you just have to enter a video or group chat, click on the information and then choose the option ‘Visibility of multimedia files’ in order to choose if we want to see them in the mobile gallery.
