If you use a file manager to browse through the folders on your Android Device, you will find a very peculiar, nameless entity randomly throughout your phone with the file extension NOMEDIA. This file is a placeholder that tells the operating system that this folder does not have any media files, hence the file extension NOMEDIA.
NOMEDIA files help speed up the device by telling it to not scan particular folders. These folders can range from sensitive, operating system folders, to random application folders that either do not contain any images, or do not contain images that the user would want to see in their gallery. As soon as the device sees the file extension NOMEDIA, it stops scanning the folder and moves on to the next. This makes a significant difference to the overall performance of Android devices.
What Do the NOMEDIA Files Contain?
They do not contain anything. The file extension, NOMEDIA, itself is what does the trick here. They are empty files. Placeholders that do not need to contain any code or other data, and are simple text files with this extension, that do not occupy any real space aside from what is required for the name and file type itself. Gallery apps and media players have this rule programmed into their file scanning subroutines that tells them to stop looking for media in any folder that contains this file.
Why Was It Made?
These files were originally made in view of Google's privacy compliance and the sole objective of their existence was to stop third party apps from seeing any media files in critical locations. This, however, had a rather pleasant side effect of making the phone faster, so it stuck. This is also a great way to keep certain folders from showing up in the gallery app if you are trying to hide personal photos. This is also a great way to keep your voice messages folders from popular messaging apps, like WhatsApp or Viber, from showing up in the music player app.
How Can You Access or Make a NOMEDIA File?
All you need is a simple text editor; just save an empty notepad file with the name, ".NOMEDIA." Then copy that file over to your Android device into every folder you do not want scanned, and you are good to go. However, there are dedicated files available for Android devices that let users create and manage NOMEDIA files without any problems. These vary by Android version and devices but some of the most popular utilities for this are "StudioKUMA" and ".nomedia Manager." These apps are very useful if you want to manage and create NOMEDIA files directly on your phone, instead of from a PC. There are several other, free apps available as well though.
