Some programs (TomTom for example) have image files as part of their installation. The N95 indexes all folders and shows the images in the gallery so you can end up with annoying thumbnails/icons/bits of map etc in your gallery.
You may also want to keep some 'private' content out of the gallery so nosey friends don't see them. Here is a guide of how to do it:
1) Download Y-Browser. This is a free file manager which is very small but incredibly useful.
2) Install it and then run it.
3) Navigate to wherever the image/video files are. You may need to dig around if the images are from an application but there is a search function so that may help.
4) For each file, highlight it and press the left selection key (LSK from here on). Go to File > Attributes and change 'Hidden' to Yes. Click the LSK again to save the change.
5) Repeat that for each file you want to hide.
6) There will be a folder called _PAlbTN in the same path as the image. Delete it.
7) That's it. You can now only view those hidden files through Y-Browser or by hooking the phone up to your PC.
NOTE: The _PAlbTN folder contains 3 different sized copies of the image and is created by, and for, the gallery app when it indexes your phone. There will be one _PAlbTN subfolder in every folder in which a picture or video exists. If you delete it the gallery will rebuild it next time it runs from all (visible) images and videos in that folder. That means even if you only want to hide some images in a given location it is still perfectly safe, and much quicker to delete the whole _PAlbTN.
I have TomTom and a few private files 😉 so found this incredibly helpful. It is peace of mind when you come back from the loo and your mates are playing with your new phone! :icon14:
Let me know if you have any questions about this or want me to clear anything up!
3Shirts, this is an excellent post and very useful - thank you for sharing - awesome!
Great post!
Very usuful, especially for people who are sick of seeing the tomtom icons/images in the library.
Alternatively if the pictures you want to hide are on the memory card, you can just connect your phone to your PC as Mass Storage (or put the card in a reader), then from within Windows simply highlight each picture you want to hide, right click and tick the "hidden" option, and maybe also delete the _PAlbTN folders as mentioned above although I didnt seem to need to do that for the images I hid on mine.
Doing it this way is much quicker because you can select / tick hidden in bulk rather than one at a time and also its obviously quicker manipulating files with a mouse etc in windows than with a d-pad on a phone, and you can even do a search for *.jpg on the root of the drive to find all jpg files for example. This method is obviously no good if you want to hide stuff on the phone memory iteslf though, as you only see the MicroSD card in Mass Storage mode.
I've followed the steps and hidden all my TomTom folders and deleted all the _PAlbTN folders. But now when i open the Gallery im greeted by my pictures along with loads of broken images where the TomTom ones used to be? They all call themselves Autorun, nomatter which one i choose??
MattySSS wrote:I've followed the steps and hidden all my TomTom folders and deleted all the _PAlbTN folders. But now when i open the Gallery im greeted by my pictures along with loads of broken images where the TomTom ones used to be? They all call themselves Autorun, nomatter which one i choose??
Did you do each file individually. For some reason Y-Browser doesn't allow multiple file operations so hiding a folder will nto hide all its contents. If you want to do a lot, hook it up to your pc as suggested by Locoblade
Yea i did do it on my PC!
Just tried to load TomTom on the N95 aswell and it wont load! :laugh: Think i messed it right up! I've hidden all the TomTom folders, i take it thats a bad idea? Just hide the individual image files?? Will TomTom still be able to see them??
MattySSS wrote:Yea i did do it on my PC!Just tried to load TomTom on the N95 aswell and it wont load! :lol: Think i messed it right up! I've hidden all the TomTom folders, i take it thats a bad idea? Just hide the individual image files?? Will TomTom still be able to see them??
I wouldn't advise hiding the whole folder, I only had about 3 images in my tomtom installation so i just hid those and it works fine. Try unhiding everything, get tomtom working again, then just hide the image files.
Not to worry think i've done it now!
Just un-hidden all the TomTom folders... set the hidden attribute to only the images. TomTom now loads and the gallery only has 2 odd TomTom files, which i assume i've missed so im going to look back through the card again!
Edit: Yes i've sorted it all now! Thanks alot, this will come in handy knowing this in the future 😊
Note to people trying this, dont hide entire folders!! It doesnt work! :laugh:
Cool, glad you got it sorted
Hehe yep hiding whole folders probably isn't a good idea 😃
I've used ybrowser to hide the offending icon-files (including the thumbnails) i don't want to see, but they still show up in the gallery... Is there a gallery-cache or something i need to clear?
I think i read something in another thread about doing something more than just hiding the files to rid them from the gallery, but i can't find that thread now. Anyone?
edit: rebooting the phone solved it. Still, if there's an easier way...?
fostex wrote:I've used ybrowser to hide the offending icon-files (including the thumbnails) i don't want to see, but they still show up in the gallery... Is there a gallery-cache or something i need to clear?I think i read something in another thread about doing something more than just hiding the files to rid them from the gallery, but i can't find that thread now. Anyone?
edit: rebooting the phone solved it. Still, if there's an easier way...?
Re-read my instructions at the top of this page. You need to remove the _PAlbTN folder as this is where the thumbnail sized images for the gallery are placed. If a reboot refreshes these as you say then that might actually be quicker though
great post....
thanks 3 shirts.....
it was of great help
but i am having this problem that the gallery seems to have some confusion...it is showing one particular image as multiple copies....
i tried deleting the _PAlbTN folders but it is still persisting..
any suggestion on rectifying this
swing
Hi all,
This worked on the original N95 and just checked it does also work on the N95 8gb just put whatever you don't want to show in the Gallery into the My Videos Folder in the mass storage memory, That's it no changing file attributes or anything else to do and easily accessed when you want anything in there.
Marc
This is how i do it (taken from another post on the N73 forum
"you CAN remove things from the gallery its just a little long winded...
- first attach the phone to your pc (or pop your memory card into a card reader) and locate the image you want to hide.
- Remove the _PAlbTN folder that you can see as a subfolder of the location the image is stored in
- Create a new folder within the memory card and make it hidden (right click, properties and tick the "hidden" check box does the trick in windows)
- move the files you want to hide to the new folder
- go back to gallery and hooray, no more file in gallery !
NOTE: Just making the folder that the file is in a hidden folder, even with the _PAlbTN folder removed, will NOT work but once you've established that the file you want to hide has gone from the folder you can rename the newly created folder to the same name as the folder which the file came from originally. This is perfect if your trying to remove application pictures as if you dont have the file in the location its meant to be in the app wont work but by renaming the new hidden folder to that of the name of the original folder the app will still work AND keep the file hidden"
You do realise you just reposted almost the exact same instructions I posted originally!
3Shirts wrote:You do realise you just reposted almost the exact same instructions I posted originally!
LOL @ your comments .. take no hostages!!! :tongue: Good post though for those that don't know how to use a forum search option.
I have a question though, why would you NOT want people to see pics on your phone? I mean, whats the point of actually keeping them hidden on your phone... If its a pic of your girlfriends snatch say for example, arent you better going to the real thing, instead of than looking at a pic of her on a small screen. I don't get it.... UNLESS maybe you got some secret snaps of somone ELSE's girlfriend and you dont want your missis to see it... ok.. that would makre more sense...
Clearly the app images need hiding... I get that. :icon1: :tongue:
The answer is porn. The answer to most things is porn
I have another reason. I share my memory card between two devices (N95 and a Windows Mobile device).
I have a number of WM applications stored on the card as well, and the gallery application shows all the images from them (buttons, backgrounds, etc. - they're not _all_ porn based applications 😉). This causes a similar issue with the media player, which picks up all the sound effects from the applications too. I wish Nokia could let you specify a few paths to use for images and sound effects.
I don't really want to make the directories hidden, but it looks like that hack is the only way.
Well i DID repost it as it seems the original person didn't manage to find it through the search option. But i can take sarcasm with good grace....LOL...
My reason for hiding stuff is also because tomtom puts all the images for the maps and speed camera info in the gallery, also the poi's are there too!
riverboat wrote:Well i DID repost it as it seems the original person didn't manage to find it through the search option. But i can take sarcasm with good grace....LOL...My reason for hiding stuff is also because tomtom puts all the images for the maps and speed camera info in the gallery, also the poi's are there too!
Yeah, i didn't mean anything :love:
It doesn't work on my n95 8gb after i put it in the my videos folder, they still show up. :con?
You can also have a zip file somewhere and password protect the files before you add them, then you can delete the files from the gallery but they are still in the zip file
wew.. this works much. thanks for sharing =))
you could try "Private call&sms guard", it can hide the files、sms and call log, the website is www.symbianon.com/page/pcg3rd5.html.