Friday, May 25, 2012

How to hide media files from a scanner in android.


There are 3 methods,  I know, which are useful to hide your media files on an Android device so that those will not b shown in Gallery.
You can choose according to level of privacy you want, and how frequently you need those files.

1.Use some app from the market (Play) :


 There are many applications on the market for hiding media files on your device.Those are most secure and give best privacy.
This is the simplest method.
But some day, your friends will see this app on your device and will come to know that, you are hiding something and would say “what a shame! What are those files hmmmm? You dirty !”


 

 

 

2. put those files in a folder with name starting with ‘.’  Dot.


.name
If you have used Linux you must be knowing that, a directory with a name starting with ‘.’ Is hidden one.
So create such a folder, using some file manager. Then copy your files you want to hide, into this directory.But you need some file manager app like Astro for this, but no need of separate hiding app and there are many other purposes of file manager ok.Also nobody would find media hiding app on your device, so they will think you are a good boy.
But be careful about choosing location of the folder, otherwise some extra curious friend of you may catch your files and you too.




3.use .nomedia named file


It’s same as second method but quite risky one. Say you want to use something different, which is android specific, then you can try this. But remember this is quite risky because of known bug in android.
For this method, create a folder somewhere using some file manager. Inside that create a file with name “.nomedia”, after that a scan will run. Then you can droop your  those files in this folder. This folder will not be scanned by next any scans and content will not be shown in Gallery.
It’s not that simple, if you place .nomedia file in a folder containing some file, those all files will b deleted, that is the bug, I now that exist in android version upto 2.2 (froyo), don’t have idea if that exist for other versions. So be careful and first place .nomedia file and then drop your personal files into the folder.