(AAS) WhatsApp won't send pictures or store backups

Applications Android Apps
1

So the Android version of WhatsApp can see my gallery pictures, but just says “item couldn’t be sent” when I try to send an attached picture. Plain messages are OK. Also backups can’t be stored.

I suspect the problem is that there’s no “WhatsApp” folder in /home/defaultuser/android_storage/ (where it would store sent pictures & backups). I tried creating one, but it doesn’t seem able to create any files or folders inside that.

I’ve tried “chmod o+rwx WhatsApp” and fiddling with the ownership/group of the folder without success.

Does anyone have any tips?

2 
[root@JollaPhone2026 android_storage]# ls -ld WhatsApp
drwxrwsrwx    2 510057   appsuppo      4096 Sep 18 09:58 WhatsApp
[root@JollaPhone2026 android_storage]# stat WhatsApp
  File: WhatsApp
  Size: 4096            Blocks: 16         IO Block: 4096   directory
Device: fe02h/65026d    Inode: 12848030    Links: 2
Access: (2777/drwxrwsrwx)  Uid: (510057/ UNKNOWN)   Gid: (501023/appsupport-media_rw)
Access: 2026-09-18 09:58:20.021186137 +0100
Modify: 2026-09-18 09:58:20.021186137 +0100
Change: 2026-09-18 09:59:43.351841468 +0100
3

It seems the work-arounds suggested here no-longer work, unless I am wrongly adapting SfOS 4.x stuff for 5.2:

1 Like
4

~/android_storage/WhatsApp was used up until Sailfish OS 4.4, the last version with AppSupport 10. Nowadays, WhatsApp stores data in two locations:

~/android_storage/Android/media/com.whatsapp/

/home/.appsupport/instance/defaultuser/data/data/com.whatsapp/

For me these have the ownership 510059:appsupport-media_rw with 770 permissions, 510059:510059 with 700 permissions. Be aware, that 510059 will be different for you.

You can fix the permissions of the first, by deleting the files .privilege_migration_done and .storage_migration_done inside ~/android_storage and restarting AppSupport.

1 Like
5

Thanks, they already exist with the correct permissions. So I am puzzled by why WhatsApp can’t send pictures that it can see :-/

6

I have a similar Problem or maybe the same. I cannot download pictures from the android folder. I only saw the blurred versions of the pictures.

I checked the permissions

510045 for the owner of i.e. the “Documents” folder. The “Android” folder has the permission 501023 for the user. When executing the following command as root I adjusted the permission to 510045 and my WA could load the pictures again.

<<chown -R 510045 /home/defaultuser/android_storage/Android/>>

But when stopping AAS or rebooting the phone the newly started AAS restores the 501023 permission for “Android”. So I have to change the permissions again for WA to work.

I have really no idea why AAS always reverts the permissions that I previously changed as root.

edit: I did not see that @sourcrowd already has a solution. Really sorry. I will check if that makes my permissions persistent.

edit2: No did not work. My command works but not persistent

7

Thanks your solution worked for me, just need to delete the .privilege_migration_done and .storage_migration_done was enough.