Exclude folders from the Gallery app

[userXEnmsVP7vn]

For some reason Gallery application suppose that any graphical file on the phone is a photo which I want to see but I have a lot of folders with music albums each of them has at least one cover image which immediately gets to my Gallery application which is really ennoying especially when you want to share your photo in whatsup and it opens the main section of the Gallery application without normal way to switch to the camera cection. So is there any normal way to set the folder which should be scanned?

[userG0Xe6sLcVo]

Please make a solution for this it has been driving me crazy since I got the phone. 

[userXEnmsVP7vn · Accepted solution]

One of the wierdiest solutions is to use a file manager application which able to create a file (I used ES File Explorer) to create a file (or just copy/paste a small one) and name it '.nomedia'  (with no quotes). Copy this file into all the directories which you want to exclude from gallery access.

It works though you may need to restart your phone to see the result.

Untill a user has to look for that kind of hacky solutions all Android devices would be really far behind iOS devices. While I was looking for the solution I found out that this problem exists for years, it means that no one really cares about user experience but only about figures of CPU mHz and camera megapixels. And this is really sad

[Samsung_ntRiS6g]

Thanks a lot for this solution!  It works perfectly on Galaxy S9 Plus, also.  

[userh1D4dedOhd]

I have all my music in a folder called Music and under that subfolders named after the bands and subfolders under there named after the album.  I found if you just create the .nomedia file and put it in the top level folder in my case music it will exclude all subfolders of music.  A little easier than having to put it in each and every band folder.

[userjrAphI618O]

@userh1D4dedOhd  when I add the .nomedia file to my music folder, it stops all music apps (Google play music, VLC, Amazon, Samsung)  from seeing the music in my music folder.  What music player are you using?  Thanks. 

[userh1D4dedOhd]

Yeah sorry I noticed that later too.  I gave up and ended up just deleting all the album images.