This is turning a generation of people tech illiterate. The young people I interact with are smart because they’re all employed by a tech company and mentored by us dinosaurs, but I’ve heard some horror stories of the tech literacy of the average young person.
Touchscreen was a mistake.
I’m an IT teacher at a community centre, I genuinely never thought I would see the day when a student younger than me enrolled. I wrongly assumed my role as a public educator would just fade out as younger generations required generally less training around computers.
Obviously courses in disability service centres would remain, and accredited training for people to kick off or retarget their careers would still exist.
But the person at the local library who meets twice a week and teaches grandma how to close the tabs on her phone felt like a job that was destined to die.
I’m in my 30s and this year I have a few teenagers in my class. The conversations are hilarious, they don’t know how to read a file location adreess or open a program that isn’t pinned to the taskbar, but at the same time, I don’t know how to access the notifications bar on an iPhone or quickly find the wifi settings without going through general settings…because I went from windows to 98, to a blackberry, to an Android, just like they went from an ipad toddler to an iPhone teen, and only now are they having Windows 11 thrown at them, and of all the computers to try and learn to use, this wouldn’t be my first recommendation (but it’s what our government funds us to teach 🤷♀️)
The skill divide is so hard to explain too. My elderly students just stare blankly at one screen, overwhelmed and confused, unsure how to recognise anything. Nothing stands out as a link, or a click able button, because the entire visual landscape is new to them. There is often a lot of hand holding which can be frustrating especially when you made a huge breakthrough in their confidence and independence only to have come in the next week feeling insecure about their skills because they’ve forgotten a little bit, or had a bad spam caller over the weekend who made them want to never touch a computer again.
Then the teens, who know what links look like and generally what they do will rush ahead, they may not know what it is exactly they’re trying to do, but they think they know what end result is expected and they generally know how to avoid catastrophic issues so they just barrel ahead, I’ll see them make 40 clicks a second for something that usually takes 2, because they’re throwing spaghetti at the wall.
I had a project last week. Dead simple. Save a linked file to a target location, import the file into another program through either drag and drop or browsing for the file, then change 1 thing, and export the final file into another target location, as specified on the activity sheet.
Barely 5 minutes in, I’m still helping Brenda get her mouse dongle plugged in, and one of the teens is finished. And yes, they have every file I asked for, and every edit I asked for, but both are just sitting in the downloads folder. And now we’re at the end looking back, the teen is confused because they have the edited file that is required to "finish*, how is it wrong, and I’m trying to explain why skipping the steps about target locations means they’ll have to start again because this activity is all about target locations and I don’t actually give two shits about this file I just need them to put things in and out of a folder until they can explain to me “a folder is a container” and not just stare into space because a folder is a black hole on their phone things they save go to until they need them again and just download them again.
Nothing stands out as a link, or a click able button, because the entire visual landscape is new to them.
That’s because modern UI designers are all about form over function. UI rules were worked out 40 years ago with the first gui’s. But you don’t get a promotion for maintaining code. So everyone has to do something different to get noticed.
So now we have UI’s where interactive and non interactive elements are mixed without any visual distinction.
To be fair, Android is absolutely atrocious whenever files are involved.
Yes, this is much worse than when a bunch of old people were upset when young people didn’t know how to use a telegraph/party line/rotary dial/gramophone/touchtone/turntable/fax/dialup modem/cassette deck/etc. Because now it’s happening now, and back then it was happening then.
Your phone is measuring time by counting how many seconds has passed since 1970-01-01 00:00 UTC. Doesn’t matter if you’re on android or apple, the OS is based on ideas of Bell Labs people’s ideas from the 1960’s.
Let’s not talk about the iPhone file explorer lol.
There is one?
There’s literally a thing you can click on called, get this…
FILES
It’s where all of the files on the device live, at least non-photo/video files.
I had an iPhone back when the 3Gs was the newest phone, then an iPod touch 4g after that. None of them had a file explorer while my android phone from the time did. I didn’t know they had added one until recently when I saw it on my roommate’s phone. So they probably didn’t know iOS had one
You’re referring to some ancient history at this point. iPhones may look like they always have, but they’ve come a long way over the years.
Yeah, I understand. It does make sense if you think about the demographic that usually uses iPhones vs Androids, I’d be willing to bet 80% of iPhones/iPods (do they even still make the iPod touch?) have only ever opened that app mistakenly haha.
Not trying to start a flame war or anything, just most iPhone users I know would pretty much never need to use the file explorer.
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Nobody came here for answers, they came here for problems that they don’t care to understand!
Now get lost like my restaraunt menus!
It’s either in
/sdcard/Downloadsor/external/emulated/0/android/data/com.google.chrome/Downloads. Couldn’t be easier.chrome instead of anything besides that
🤢🤮
com.microsoft.iemobileOh god, i didn’t know such an atrocity exists on Android
oh yeah? now list paths for all the other applications
You have other applications?
Except when it is not…
For example Boost saves photo is some photo folder somewhere.
The only way i can find anything is using a photo app and scanning my entire phone to find things.
I was being facetious. Yeah, every app saves into a different location. It’s bonkers.
Android has ways for app devs to specify where files get saved. App devs just usually don’t give a shit, because they want to write a single lowest common codebase for android and iOS.
ITT: people who have no working knowledge of file system navigation complain about the lack of such knowledge
honestly it’s not this, is just the fact that android puts so much shit in between you and whatever you’re trying to do.
The concept of downloading a file is simple, it’s courtesy to tell you where it downloads at the very least. Android doesnt exactly have the most sane of defaults.
dont get me wrong, im a linux user, im a certified power user, even i can’t stand android.
It’s easier to just redownload the file at points. I think I got like 6 copies of the same utility bill on my mobile because it was easier.
file - downloads
me: /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/org.mozilla.firefox/files/Download or /storage/3564-3130/Android/data/org.mozilla.firefox/files/Download here I come!
POV: you let udisks2 automount your drive for you.
Isn’t the opposite?
Saving in downloads on Android doesn’t need additional storage permissions, so apps will save in the big “trash can” downloads folder
Instead, who the fuck knows where iOS saved that file, where every app is sandboxed and isolated
The worst is when an android app is clearly an iOS port. E.g Patreon app saves all files under a generic name rather than the one you get when saving the same file from a browser, because I guess on iOS it just goes into your camera reel without a filename anyway. Or how Bluesky app just straight up says “saved to your camera reel” and puts it in your DCIM folder, with no option to specify a different location.
The worst is when an android app is clearly an iOS port.
This always means there are zero settings. If there’s no way of configuring the app, I find an alternative. There are few things more frustrating than software that assumes one size fits all.
True, the folder is pretty easy to find and always the same.
Although the big problem is how quickly that folder can get messy.
Mine is filled with so much pdf files that i never want to sort, sometimes there’s duplicates because i didn’t want to scroll to find the first one so i downloaded it a second time.
First android I ever had was a Galaxy S2. Goddammit that phone was so nice. I even bought a 2nd one when the first one died. But android file trees are way easier to navigate than iOS.
There’s a app called files that takes you to your saved storage, it’s not even difficult
And Fossify File Manager if you don’t want to deal with Google.
If you’re using a stock android device, the OS on your phone still has permissions to read and write to storage, by necessity. If what you’re concerned about is privacy, you have very limited ability to set storage scopes if you don’t trust the OS, and this doesn’t really change if you install an app.
If you’re using fossify file manager or any other file manager, you’ve given that app+the default Files app access to your storage. This is not more private. Most of those similar apps are essentially just skins on top of the default manager (which I suppose could be useful). This only really adds attack surface and doesn’t have any meaningful privacy benefits, and potentially some detractors depending on the app you use.
If you don’t trust the operating system and its utilities, the best option is to find an operating system you trust, and not to just install new skins on top of existing apps.
No I was alluding to the fact that google files layout I find difficult to work with.
You probably can disable google files on most phones(and similiar google apps, even though not completely)
https://www.f-droid.org/en/packages/name.lmj001.savetodevice/ I just use share option and select this app it just saves where ever u want…
Would anyone know where wallpapers are stored? I took a picture with an older phone (Oneplus 6) and used it as such. I upgraded to Nothing Phone 1 and I am using it as wallpaper because it copied when migrating but I cannot find anywhere for the life of me!
If it was using a version of android, photos are usually stored in DCIM folders either on your phone’s internal storage or more likely on the SD card.
Not there. At this point I don’t think it is a “camera” picture anymore but rather a system or custom wallpaper.
Android 14 :/
In the Downloads or Pictures folder , under the name of the application. I am shocked that this isn’t common knowledge.
android is actually such a fucking mess, dont even get me started.
WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT .nomedia FILES WERE A GOOD IDEA? WHO, WHICH ONE OF YOU WAS IT?
i would genuinely rather use linux on my phone, and im not even joking, android is just the worst.
What’s so bad about it? I use it to keep my mangá folder out of the gallery app.
for starters. The fact that i had to google it to figure out what it was. Let alone randomly discover that it exists in a tangentially related search. It is an ASTRONOMICALLY inaccessible feature to someone who isn’t readily invested into android.
secondarily, it should be done in the gallery, obviously. That just MAKES sense. The place where you are shown pictures, should also be the place where it lets you ignore more pictures. If you want to use .nomedia as a backend for that? Fine, Document it at atleast.
It’s also just, weird… The gallery app only seems to consider a few folders existing at any state. Some better than others, i have no idea what drives the logic behind it. But you can nest them, super easily, which definitely won’t cause any issues. If you have a single folder you do want to show, but 9 that you don’t, you need 9 no media files, because that’s convenient apparently.
I mean really any other system would’ve been better, a directory list, a file table, a database, literally anything that lets you mark it interactively. Having a single HIDDEN file, determine the state of an entirely independent app is just next level hackery. You really shouldn’t ever do that. It’s just fundamentally bad design philosophy. It’d be like a lightswitch on the opposite side of your home, preventing your garage door from opening.
It’s wild to me that everyone here talking about how much Android sucks is just airing greivances about the stock apps from Google/Samsung/etc.
The gallery app is not part of Android. The file manager is not part of Android. pretty much every app that came preinstalled on your phone is not part of the OS.
You don’t hate Android, you hate the bloatware that came on your phone.
yet another big problem with android. Why does every OEM have their own flavor that is equally shit.
Im sure people will tell me to just root it or use different software, my brother in christ i want you to ship me a phone that i can fucking use, not one that i have to sterilize and give amnesia. Linux has been doing this for a million years, why can’t android?
Doesn’t seem that complex to me. Feels like it’s akin to a .gitignore file to me.
.gitignore would be application specific though? In that case you have a semi reasonable usage case, because it’s obviously going to be documented, and it’s not like it interferes with too much else.
Isnt that the fault of some apps which doesn’t show where the file is? Or does android itself doesnt show it when you save it using system app??
Now try it on an iPhone
Or OneDrive.
File > Save As > Desktop.
Doesn’t save to local Desktop, but the OneDrive desktop wherever the fuck that is.
This is why I say that Windows is not user friendly. People just got trained to put up with it.
