Mm, that's not exactly true. Having done a bit of Android development, these days you're rarely operating on a "home directory" structure like you might be familiar with from Windows, Linux, etc. Instead you're saving files to a "container" filesystem that's exposed to the user in a few facets: Downloads, Photos, Music, etc.
What's even more confusing is that some apps save images directly to the "Gallery" which is separate from the "file and folder" view you get otherwise. So (as an inaccurate example), Fujifilm's app might download directly to your "Camera Roll" while GoPro's app might create a "GoPro" directory to dump photos/videos in, which offers more separation but doesn't appear in the "Photos" app by default.
Some apps even have toggles to switch between these two methods of saving files - though if I recall correctly, the non-Gallery/Camera Roll method (while desirable to many users) of saving images has technically been deprecated for a while.
My apologies, what I meant was "saved" to. Different applications have different default locations without ever prompting for it. I did figure out where FF mobile downloads files.
But attempting to save an attachment (from Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber...) and then either open it or attach it from another program leaves me perplexed. I generally rely on "share with" to avoid this, but I am guessing not all apps register proper MIME types or detect them properly so the option I need doesn't show up every time.
I guess the fact that I mostly moved from DOS to Linux never really got me away from thinking about files and directories, and inconsistency in Android really bothers me.
>I guess the fact that I mostly moved from DOS to Linux never really got me away from thinking about files and directories, and inconsistency in Android really bothers me.
Been there too. After some (maybe a lot) investigation I learned that this "inconsistency" in Android happens, because some apps use "private" directories which you (or other apps) aren't allowed to look at. Think of these as directories of user Linux users who turned off read access for others, i.e. "chmog og-r $HOME"
After finding apps like Solid Explorer and especially Termux, I learned to comprehend what's going on. But I still hate it that apps (and Android) prevent me from looking at my data the way I like to do it. For "security reasons" I not allowed to view things on my devices? Sheesh!
Nice apps like Markor or Diary (from Bill Farmer) store their data in user visible directories. As such apps exist, I tend to ignore those with limiting my access.
I get your frustration, that was an inconsistency I disliked about Android too. I felt like it was fairly normal for "power users" to have an 3rd party file browser with more functions to help manage the files on the phone.
One thing I appreciate about iOS is there's a Files app/UI, and if your app wants to save some user-facing data, it can go into the Files app. From there it's a simplified Explorer/Finder type file browser. It's not perfect but its consistent to me.
