I really like my Pixel 6 but this behavior I'm going to describe drives me to distraction. When I copy pictures to the phone from my digital camera, the apps such as Files and Photos refuse to acknowledge the changes for a very long time, like overnight. Here's an example: Screenshot showing 5 photos copied to the phone using Ghost Commander at 3:13 Screenshot showing that **10 minutes later**, Files still shows obsolete contents of the folder (pictures I deleted before I copied in the new ones) But it is not this way with every app! When I take a screenshot (as I did for this question) they show up immediately in Files. No waiting! The pictures will reliably show up in Files the next day. I thought that I could force a "refresh" by restarting the phone, but that does not always work (it has worked 2 out of 3 tries). It kind of looks like Google apps send a signal that "hey, there are new photos" that Ghost Commander doesn't. And the phone does some kind of system wide search overnight. I expected that you could "swipe to refresh" or something, but it seems not. Is there a reliable way to force Files and Photos to refresh their knowledge of what is in a folder?

When opening PDFs in "Files by Google" it always opens in Drive PDF Viewer. I want them to open in Adobe. I've looked online and got a lot similar issue, but none of the fixes work for me. Here is what I found in other posts and tried: - Clearing cache and storage in Drive and Files. - Selecting "Don't allow app to open links" in "Open by Default" for both Drive and Files. - There is no PDF option in "Setting"->"Apps"->"Default apps" for me to change. - Denying Files the "Modify system settings" permission. - Temporarily installing another PDF viewer to force a default app prompt when opening PDFs from Files (which it doesn't). - Temporarily installing another file manager and selecting Adobe as my default PDF viewer. It doesn't carry to Files. - Disabling Drive, opening the PDF from Files while Adobe is my only viewer. It opens in Adobe automatically but goes back to Drive as soon as I enable it again. - Disabling Drive, opening the PDF in Files while I have multiple viewers available, selecting Adobe and clicking "Always". It goes back to opening in Drive as soon as I enable it again. I am using a Google Pixel 8 Pro with Android 14. I had the same problem with my Pixel 6 for the past two+ years and possibly my older pixel 3, but I don't quite remember.

There is an .apk file when I use Google Files. But it says it's not installed. It is taking up over one MB of memory. How do I remove it? Better yet how do I find it?