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That could absolutely explain why some folders aren’t showing up in Gallery.
Android ignores media inside folders containing a .nomedia file
Interesting. I actually found a .nomedia file in one of the folders that should contain photos.
Not sure how it got there.
Another thing to check:
Look for a “.nomedia” file in any affected folders. Sometimes Android stops indexing media if one of those files appears where it shouldn’t.
Smart move.
Whenever storage shows full but files appear missing, I always make a backup first before touching anything else.
Good point. I’m copying everything over right now. It’s taking forever because there’s a lot of data.
Before trying too many fixes, I’d connect the phone to a computer and copy everything you can still access. Having a backup gives you room to experiment.
Yeah. I forced a media rescan and rebooted. Most folders came back afterward.
Did you end up fixing it?
I had almost the exact thing happen on my S21 after a One UI update.
Photos were still physically on the phone, but Gallery acted like they didn’t exist.
That’s encouraging.
Usually if image files still exist, the problem is software-related. Could be a media database issue after the update.
Just tried that.
It actually found a lot more image files than Gallery is showing. Some are inside folders with weird names I’ve never seen before.
Try a different file manager and search the entire storage for JPG files.
Samsung’s file manager doesn’t always make it easy to spot everything
Yeah, I checked.
The DCIM folder is there, but the Camera folder only contains a handful of recent photos. Definitely not thousands of pictures.
If storage usage hasn’t changed, I’d avoid assuming the photos are gone. It sounds more like the phone isn’t indexing them correctly.
Have you checked the DCIM folder with a file manager?
I’d remove the .nomedia file, reboot, and let the phone re-index everything