Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones often face the mysterious behavior of the standard Gallery, where an album called All Photos or All Photos is automatically created.This system container collects images from all the folders of the device, creating duplicates and taking up space in the visual list of albums. Users wonder whether this album can be removed to restore order in the media library.
It's worth noting right away that All Photos is not a folder, but a virtual sample generated by the MIUI or HyperOS shell algorithms. Simply dragging files or standard deleting them through the menu often fails, as the system instantly restores this item, but there are proven methods to hide or completely remove this album from view.
In this article, we’ll look at all the working ways to solve the problem, from cleaning the app’s cache to using third-party file managers, and learn why this album reappears and how to prevent it from being recreated without losing important shots.
The Nature of the System Album in MIUI
All Photos is an integral part of the logic of the standard Gallery app on Xiaomi devices, which is designed to aggregate all the graphics files in the phone’s memory in one place for quick viewing, scans the internal storage and creates an index base that is displayed to the user as a separate album.
Many people confuse this album with real folders like DCIM or Screenshots. Unlike them, All Photos doesn't have a physical path in the file system that you can just erase. It's a dynamic list that's updated every time you open a gallery or take a new picture.
The appearance of duplicates or “sticking” deleted photos in this album is often due to errors in indexing of Android media files. If the database of media content is damaged, the system can assume that the photos still exist, and continue to display them in the shared album, even if the originals have been deleted long ago.
⚠️ Note: Trying to delete system files through root rights without understanding the structure of Android may cause the Gallery to stop opening or displaying any images.
💡
Before any manipulation of system folders, back up important photos in the cloud or on your computer.
Basic cleaning methods through Gallery settings
The safest and first step is to have the standard album management tools built into the app. Often users don't notice the hide features when they try to find the delete button. First, open the Gallery app and go to the Albums tab.
Click on the three dots in the top right corner of the screen to open the settings menu. You should look for Hide Albums or Album Management. In some versions of MIUI, you can manually select which system folders to display and which to hide. If All Photos are in the list of hidden, just activate the switch in front of it.
If the standard hideout doesn’t work, try to clear the Gallery app itself.This won’t delete your photos, but reset the display settings and re-index the media files. Go to Settings → Apps → All Apps → Gallery.
- 📱 Click on “Memory” or “Storage” in the app menu.
- 🗑️ Select the “Clear Data” option by confirming the action.
- 🔄 Restart the device to complete the re-indexing process.
Once the reboot is complete, the system will create a new index, often solving the problem of phantom albums, but if All Photos is still there, a deeper file system intervention will be required.
☑️ Check before data clearing
Using a file manager to delete.nomedia
For more advanced users, an effective way to manage album visibility is to create a special marker file. Android ignores folders that contain a file called.nomedia. This method hides the system folders that pull up to the album All photos, thereby clearing its contents.
You’ll need a third-party file manager, such as MT Manager, Total Commander, or a built-in Explorer with hidden file access. Enable hidden files in your Explorer settings (usually a “Show Hidden Files” checkbox). Find a folder that you don’t want to see in your shared feed (such as a folder with app logos or messenger cache).
Inside this folder, create a new file and call it strictly.nomedia (required to be a dot at the beginning and no extension). Once you create the file, you need to reboot the phone. The system will scan the storage, see the marker and exclude this folder from the general media index.
| Type of folder | Location. | Do you need.nomedia? | The result |
|---|---|---|---|
| DCIM/Camera | Internal memory. | No. | Photos will remain in the gallery |
| Android/Data | Internal memory. | Yes (partially) | Disappearance from apps |
| MIUI/Gallery | Internal memory. | No. | System miniatures |
| Temp/Cache | Different folders. | Yes. | Cleaning up the trash tape |
This method is effective for cleaning the album tape from unnecessary visual noise, although the title “All photos” may remain as a system category.
What to do if no.nomedia file is created?
The problem of duplicates in the cloud Mi Cloud
Often, users can't delete an album or a photo from it because it's synced to Mi Cloud, in which case the gallery displays not only local files, but also cloud copies, and if you delete a photo on your phone, it can be recovered from the cloud the next time you connect to the network.
To check this, go to Settings → Mi → Mi Cloud → Gallery. If sync is active, try temporarily disabling it. After turning it off, the system will ask what to do with cloud photos on your device. Select Delete from your device if you want to leave copies only in the cloud, or vice versa.
It is also worth checking the web version of the cloud at i.mi.com. If the album "All photos" is formed by images downloaded from other devices (tablets, old phones), the removal should be done in the cloud storage, and not on a particular smartphone.
- ☁️ Go to the settings of the Mi Account on the device.
- 📂 Select the “Mi Cloud” section and find the “Gallery” section».
- 🔻 Turn off the sync slider to check the source of duplicates.
It is important to understand that the album “All photos” in the cloud is just a smart tape, and you can clean it completely only by deleting the photos themselves from all the sync folders.
Third-party applications for gallery management
If Xiaomi’s standard system doesn’t remove an annoying album, it makes sense to use alternative apps to view photos. Third-party galleries often ignore MIUI system albums or allow you to flexibly configure display filters.
A popular solution is to install apps like Google Photos, Simple Gallery (or its forks, since the original was sold) or A+ Gallery. These apps create their own file index and are independent of Xiaomi's Gallery system settings. You can just stop using the standard app and make a third-party gallery by default.
When a third-party app first launches, it will ask permissions to access media files. After scanning, you will see a clean folder structure without an obtrusive All Photos album, unless the app has its own Photos feature (like Google Photos), which, however, can be hidden in the interface settings.
⚠️ Note: When installing a third-party gallery, make sure it has good reviews and does not require excessive permissions so as not to violate the privacy of your personal photos.
Using alternative software is often the most elegant solution, allowing you to bypass the limitations of the manufacturer’s shell without complex manipulation of system files.
Resetting and radical measures
In cases where the All Photos album contains broken thumbnails, hasn’t been deleted for years, or causes interface failures, a complete reset of the multimedia subsystem settings may be required, a last resort if other methods have not worked.
One way is to delete media storage database files, and to do this, through a file manager with access to system folders (root or ADB required), you need to find files with the.db extension in the /data/data/com.android.providers.media/databases/ folder. Deleting the external.db file will cause the system to rescan the entire memory, a process that can take a long time after a reboot.
If the problem is software-related and is related to a specific MIUI update, sometimes only a full reset of the device to the factory settings (Wipe all data) helps.Be sure to save all data before that, since the internal memory will be completely cleared.
adb shell pm clear com.android.providers.mediaThis command, through the Android Debug Bridge (ADB), cleans the media provider's data, which is often more effective than manually deleting files, and once the command is executed, the phone needs to restart.
💡
A complete media database reset via ADB is the most effective way to remove hanging albums, but requires a computer and a configured debugger.