Nothing GalleryApp Just Deleted 144 Hidden Images

SpeedMirage · 2025-09-12T14:56:58+00:00

NothingGalleryApp just wiped out 144 of my hidden photos without a trace. These weren’t random shots. Some were important documents I need for my future, and some were the only pictures I had of my dead grandparents. They are gone. Your app already has a pile of bugs and broken features, but this crosses a line. You need to have a way to get my pictures back, and you need to tell me what it is right now. This isn’t just a small glitch. It’s a sick failure on your part that just ruined something precious. Also it seems like I'm not alone here. Why did you release an untested app on playstore? You better have an answer to this you sick fucks. People have been posting on this community about this error since March. It's been 7 months! Seven freaking months and no one even bothered to look at it. https://nothing.community/d/28890-hidden-photos-getting-deleted-nothing-gallery

SpeedMirage

Nicouschulas No. I always have Smart Cleaner turned off.

Stereobasic

SpeedMirage And what is the state of the memory in your phone, how many Gb available and used before it deleted everything?

Anonymous906

I would be curious to know if anyone who has lost their photos has enabled Storage Manager?

Kawar

Anonymous906

I am interested to know if the device ever replied

vermakushaagra87

SpeedMirage sir, did your issue resolved?

dhruvarora_3ZFxJo4yHS

I have also encountered a similar issue. 7-8 pics I downloaded from the internet disappeared from the hidden folder after 2 weeks. Then when I digged deep, I realized that those photos had conflicting file names. For example: download.jpg for multiple images. I believe such photos get overwritten when you hide/unhide them.

nothingleft_tolose

CMF1_hacker I’ve got my photos backing up to a WD NAS automatically, then we make backups of those backups regularly. To other people they just look like normal photos of my dog and selfies with my friends, but I don’t want to lose them.

ParthJoshi_3hj1TsE0sx

SpeedMirage Yes, this has happened to me as well, and telling to back up photos is stepping down from responsibility of answering WHERE THE HELL ARE THE PHOTOS?

Siddu0614

SpeedMirage I also had that same issue on gallery

The reason may be deleted the hidden cache or thumbnail files from files app

I enabled that ‘shpw hidden files’ then i found a file size similar to a photo from my hidden album then I moved it to bin then that image gone deleted from folder

So this Nothing gallery basically renames the original file into hidden file unlike google photos

In my POV this isn’t a secure method, anybody can rename that file and there’s no privacy man

JP

Siddu0614 yup…that’s very basic way of hiding files… it’s strange seeing it’s still same… i also deleted hidden files by mistake…

I used to hide images and folder with “.” Back in Android 4(kitkat) days… i still do this…mostly for photos which i don’t want to be seen in gallery…

you can also try removing/changeing extension to hide and keep those files in some separate folder…

ankit_sharma

Yesterday I noticed something strange, there were 1700+ photos as people, 300+ documents, buildings, dogs, and many more in scenes detection. Now there is only 528 people, 159 documents, and many tags completely gone.
Now I am confused whether the photos got deleted or just I lost recognition. There is nothing in recently deleted, i mean there is but only few which I deleted myself.

JP

ankit_sharma might be a glitch… it’s same for me… there are more than 5000 photos but only 800-900 are auto/ai sorted in explore…

ankit_sharma

JP that issue is long lasting, but recognised photos are removed, that’s what I saw first time.

JP

ankit_sharma if photos are jot deleted then there is nothing to worry …you can try clearing cache and data for gallery app and see if it does sort photos correctly or not…

And also send feedback from your phone…settings>feedback

Rishik Iyyappan

Check Google Photos maybe, If you sign in, it might get you lost photos by backing it up and maybe you can save it.

SpeedMirage

Gentlemen, I barely use the device for anything useful anymore. Gave away the Nothing device my mom was using too. I made a promise I’ll never buy or use anything from these 🤡.

It’s been over two years. So many people suffered and for some reason it’s still happening. Sell the device, throw it in the river or whatever you wish. Buy a phone from a different brand and save your sanity.

Edit for the mod: My apologies for failing to show the proper respect to a company whose primary technical achievement is the digital lobotomy of my personal memories.

It is truly impressive how you managed to maintain a multiyear streak of absolute incompetence by treating bug reports like unwanted junk mail.

I was wrong to call you the “C” word because that was unfair to C’s 🤡. 🤡's actually have to practice to be that ridiculous while Nothing software team has a natural and effortless gift for being this ridiculous.

LisaButhello

SpeedMirage

SpeedMirage I am facing this issue now in May 2026 and I am genuinely confused on what the solution is. I need to restore the media somehow but I can’t find any trace of it being deleted and I never backed it up because they were private and I trusted the nothing software to be secure. Please tell me you found a fix for this somehow….

SpeedMirage

LisaButhello Hi Lisa, I’m sorry to tell you that I couldn’t find a solution. After having multiple conversations and 100s of emails, not only did they not fix it, they literally shifted the blame on me even tho I’m not the only one that suffered.

In the end, I was so frustrated that I told them to share the gallery app’s source code and let us fix it. Obviously they disagreed.

It won’t surprise you to hear I stopped using the phone. If you wish to use a different Gallery app, I recommend Refra Gallery app. The apps packyname is com.dot.gallery.

LegendNoobGamers

SpeedMirage bro if you want them back just go to files and device storage to document and there will be folder named .filebygallery there will be files with .dat extension just change that to .JPG or .mp4 I know this will take time but I have recovered by 455photos and videos manually 🙂🥀🥀

SpeedMirage

LegendNoobGamers

It’s a new addition i guess? When it happened to me, everything was wiped out. Couldn’t find any trace of anything anywhere.

@LisaButhello Please see if this works for you

notiket

LegendNoobGamers this works. you have to manually search for .dat files if the file explorer doesn’t show anything.

SumitPai

I have a better solution (I tried it and worked flawlessly).

Thanks to LegendNoobGamers

First go to your file manager and turn on hidden files (it’s usually in settings of the file manager) then go to Internal Storage>Documents>.FilesByGallery

Now there will be lots of bin/dat files (depending on your hidden files count).

For a backup purpose, copy all the files and paste it somewhere else.

Now go back to documents folder and rename the .FilesByGallery with something (like .FilesByGallery1) and then go to gallery app.

Now close the app and force stop and clear cache the gallery app. (Don’t open the app just yet)

Now go back to documents folder and rename the .FilesByGallery1 folder back to its original name (without 1).

Now close everything and open gallery and check if your hidden files are back.

If so, congratulations! 🎉

If not, you have to manually rename every bin/dat file to jpeg or mp4 and move to another location and save it in Google Photos.

I hope this helps someone.

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