How to exclude folders with pics appearing in the photo gallery

Anonymous
2023-03-05T11:07:08+00:00

How do I exclude folders from appearing in the Photo Gallery of onedrive Android?

The photo gallery of onedrive Android is showing all photos in my onedrive. I believe the Photo Gallery should limit to only the photos in the Pictures folder, same as the online version, but this is not what is happening.

This means it is showing a lot unwanted pics by default in the photo gallery, such as wallpapers, documents pics or even private medical photos that should never appear in the default photo gallery.

Yes, there is a filter in the Photo Gallery to only show "Pictures folders", and this works. However the filter is not sticky, this means every time I open the app it reverts back to show everything, so if I have people around when I open the Photo Gallery, I never know what private photos are going to show up.

I have tried using the ".nomedia" file to exclude folders, but no luck.

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For home | Android

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

59 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2024-01-04T14:01:47+00:00

    Yeah, you are right, I didn't notice that part in the question.

    In any case I totally agree with you.

    Current behaviour is borderline unusable even with this filter.

    I would say MS should create an option to select a set of folders to be shown is 'Photos' tab, and exclude all others.

    At least that's what I would consider an acceptable solution.

    Unfortunately, I don't think this post will ever be recognized by MS dev team.

    Just as you mentioned MS never gives a **** about the desires of their customers. They live in their own universe.

    The only advice I can give as of now is to purchase a yearly subscription to google cloud services. It is a bit more expensive but the UX is what you're paying for I suppose.

    Was this answer helpful?

    4 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2024-01-04T13:27:16+00:00

    Hi Garmash,

    If you read the key question, you see your answer is a reiteration of the issue and not a solution.

    The filter is unreliable and oversimplified. Not up to current privacy standards we expect, that have been downgrading.

    Anyone should be able to control visibility per photo and/or subfolder.

    Microsoft continues to show quite a bit of arrogance when trying to guess what the users want.

    This is annoying me to the point of being actively looking for alternatives to Onedrive Photos.

    Was this answer helpful?

    4 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2023-12-01T17:45:55+00:00

    I am having the same issue where I have moved files (photos) into separate folders and I do not want these included in the memories or in the photo section on both mobile and computer, yet they are. We need to have an option to omit certain folders and/or files from view and not necessarily be "hidden". Privacy is a concern here, and this needs to be front and centre with the development team!! This has taken too long, and I have been sourcing other methods of my backup and cloud needs, meaning I may have to leave Microsoft for a competitor. Please do not MAKE me leave...

    Was this answer helpful?

    4 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2023-08-24T18:02:29+00:00

    My solution was to remove OneDrive and use other solutions. My issue is OneDrive is synching a lot of things I don't want synchronized and there is no way to exclude them on mobile. It's all or nothing and I was hitting the wall of my subscription. So removing it resolved it and I'll use a different, non-microsoft solution for my needs.

    Was this answer helpful?

    4 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2023-07-03T19:51:16+00:00

    I have some backups from old disks of friends... all their foto's appear on my timeline.

    I ended up zipping them all into a password protected zip... what a nightmare.

    Was this answer helpful?

    4 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments