The Gallery is very useful for phone users to display the pictures. When we want to check the photos on the phone, we mostly open the gallery. But when we want to open the photos, the photos cannot be showing in the Gallery. How to fix this problem?
Solutions for Gallery Not showing SD Card Pictures
Solution 1: Restart your Android phone
If you’re having trouble viewing your photos in your phone’s gallery, you can try restarting your Android device first. Next, you can check if the disappeared photos on the Android SD card is displayed in the Gallery.
Solution 2: Reinsert the SD Card into Android
Please go to the Storage, and then click Unmount SD Card to remove the SD card from Android device safely. If you directly remove the SD card from Android, it is harmful to SD card. Next, turn off the Android phone.
Now you can remove the SD card from your Android phone. A few minutes later, reinsert the SD card into your phone. You can check if the picture can be viewed in the Gallery.

Solution 3: Clear cache
Please follow the steps:
- Go to and click File Manager – Android – Data;
- Find this folder com.android.gallery3d, and delete it;
- Go to Settings – Apps / Application manage, and search for Gallery;
- Open Gallery, click Clear Data.
- Turn off the Android phone for a few minutes, and turn on. All the images you want will be showing under Gallery.
Solution 4: Check directory on SD card
Please check there is the file called “.nomedia” in the directory on SD card. The “.nomedia” file is a blank file placed in a folder. When the media scanner detects a “.nomedia” file, the media scanner does not scan the folder, so the images in that folder are not displayed in Gallery. If you find the “.nomedia” file, you need to delete it. And then turn off the Android device for a few minutes and turn on to check the photos in the Gallery.

Solution 5: Format the SD card
When you try this solution to format the SD card, first, you need to make a backup for the files on the SD card.
Step 1: connect the SD card to the computer via the card reader, and format it;
Step 2: copy the files that you back up to the SD card;
Step 3: insert the SD card to your Android phone, and turn on the phone to check the photos in the Gallery.
If you didn’t back up the files on the SD card, after the formatting, the files on the SD card are lost at all. Therefore, you can try using the data recovery software to scan the SD card and recover the lost data. There is a free tool for you to recover the photos and videos from SD card. It is Mini Tool Photo Recovery.
Download it from the website and launch it.
When you enter the main interface, click Start, and next select the disk which represent the SD card, click Scan. The setting function is for you to select the file types that you want to get.

After the scanning, you can get your images. Select them and click Save to store them to a safe place.
When you have this problem-your photos cannot show in the Gallery, please try these five solutions to fix it. For the last solution, formatting the SD card will cause the data loss; therefore, users need to make a backup firstly. If you already lost the data, you can try the MiniTool Photo Recovery to retrieve the lost photos.
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