Why should I refresh the media database?

Applications such as music players, gallery applications and USB connections to your computer, retrieve information from the mediastore database. Each version of Android has become more dependent on this database to find and organize content. Which means a corruption in the mediastore database can occur more frequently, causing many weird problems. Refreshing the mediastore database is the only way to force the database to rebuild itself fixing the problems the corruption caused.

When should I refresh my Android media database?

• Playlists continuously being removed from your music player
• Oddness (no songs in playlist, sluggishness, missing/blank library) in any music player
• Device Failed to update playlist - error message in iSyncr

The following tutorial will explain on refreshing the mediastore database in detail. Proceed through this tutorial when you have the ability to leave your device alone for a period of hours (e.g. before you sleep) when we refresh the mediastore database we need to give it time to rebuild before we try using it again. Note: Resetting the mediastore database will remove ringtones, Android created playlists and notifications. It has been reported that Android gallery apps may also be affected.

1. Go to your device "Application Manager". This may be found by accessing your device settings then selecting "apps".

2. Choose "All". Search for an application named "Media Storage" or "Media Store". You may need to "Show system apps" on Android 6.0 and later.

Note: This application came with the device and was not downloaded.

4. Once in the list of all applications, scroll down to select "Media Storage" or "Media Store".


4. Select "Media Storage" sometimes called "Media Store" or other variation; press "Clear data".

Note: This does not remove media, but clears the database that music and other applications use to display songs, playlists, etc.


8. Now that we've cleared the mediastore database, we will rebuild it. Reboot your Android device. When your device reboots, wait for a period of hours before trying to use your device to allow the mediastore database to rebuild.