Android: Refreshing the Gallery after saving new images

I tried Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().toString(), but it didn't find my custom folder.

I just wanted to share my experience to solving this issue.

At the end, I had MediaScannerConnection configured to scan one file at a time and now missing folder that was holding those images showed up. Every time I download each image, I called MediaScannerConnection and file path as Uri instead of folder itself.

Also, many people asked why sendBroadcast stop working on kitkat and the answer is that sendBroadcast was abused and called too many times and causing system to drain battery or slowdown, so they removed the direct call to prevent abuse which makes sense. I was hoping to use above solution to the folder that hold all images, but it didn't work on the folder. I was hoping that finding folder would expose rest of the files within the custom folder, but it didn't in my case. I am hoping to find better answer in the future...

Here's snippet of my code.

MediaScannerConnection.scanFile(ApplicationContext.context, new String[] { imageFile.getPath() }, null,
              new MediaScannerConnection.OnScanCompletedListener() {
                @Override
                public void onScanCompleted(String path, Uri uri) {
                  Log.i(TAG, "Scanned " + path);
                }
              });

Code provided by Petrus in another answer works for me on Kitkat (4.4):

MediaScannerConnection.scanFile(this, new String[] { Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().toString() }, null, new MediaScannerConnection.OnScanCompletedListener() {
/*
 *   (non-Javadoc)
 * @see android.media.MediaScannerConnection.OnScanCompletedListener#onScanCompleted(java.lang.String, android.net.Uri)
 */
public void onScanCompleted(String path, Uri uri) 
  {
      Log.i("ExternalStorage", "Scanned " + path + ":");
      Log.i("ExternalStorage", "-> uri=" + uri);
  }
    });

Below code work all device for refreshing the gallery after saving image.

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.KITKAT) {
       Intent mediaScanIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE);
       File f1 = new File("file://" + Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory(Environment.DIRECTORY_PICTURES));
       Uri contentUri = Uri.fromFile(f1);
       mediaScanIntent.setData(contentUri);
       sendBroadcast(mediaScanIntent);
   } else {
       sendBroadcast(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MEDIA_MOUNTED, Uri.parse("file://" + Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory())));
   }
   sendBroadcast(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE, Uri.fromFile(new File("your image path"))));

Try this one: after saving your file to folder,write below code

sendBroadcast(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE, Uri.fromFile(new File("your image path"))));