Image, saved to sdcard, doesn't appear in Android's Gallery app

Question

I save an image to the sdcard and it doesn't appear in the Gallery application until I pull off the sdcard and return it back.

Do you have any idea why is it so?

Seems like the Gallery application has some cache that isn't updated on file save...

Actually, I also want to open the just-saved image in Gallery application and have no success with that
this is my question about this issue.

Answer 1

A simpler solution is to use the static convenience method scanFile():

File imageFile = ... MediaScannerConnection.scanFile(this, new String[] { imageFile.getPath() }, new String[] { "image/jpeg" }, null); 

where this is your activity (or whatever context), the mime-type is only necessary if you are using non-standard file extensions and the null is for the optional callback (which we don't need for such a simple case).

Answer 2

My answer to the original question and to anyone else that may have this problem:

I was having this same problem, images in my app that people saved to the SD card were not showing up in their Gallery immediately. After some searching I found this one line of code inserted after my 'save to sdcard' code that fixed the problem:

sendBroadcast(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MEDIA_MOUNTED, Uri.parse("file://"+ Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory())));

Answer 3

The system scans the SD card when it is mounted to find any new image (and other) files. If you are programmatically adding a file, then you can use this class:

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/MediaScannerConnection.html