If you’ve spent hours roaming Alola in Pokemon Sun, Moon, or their Ultra versions on Citra, snapping photos of wild Tauros, cute Pikachu, or even rare shiny Pokemon with the Pokefinder, you’ve probably wondered where to find pictures taken on Pokefinder Citra emulator after you close the game. I’ve been there too—once I took a perfect shot of a shiny Rockruff at sunset, and spent 20 minutes digging through random folders before I found it. This guide breaks down every possible location for those photos, plus fixes for if they go missing, and easy ways to organize them so you never lose your favorite captures again.
Default Location for Pictures Taken on Pokefinder Citra Emulator
Citra stores all user-specific game data in slightly different locations depending on your operating system, and Pokefinder photos are stored in the game’s extended save data (extdata) folder by default, not your regular Citra screenshots folder. If you’ve never navigated Citra’s file structure before, don’t worry—it looks more complicated than it is. The random ID folders are just unique identifiers for your 3DS profile and game saves, so you don’t need to memorize them, just sort by date modified to find the folder you used most recently.
Windows default path is usually AppData/Roaming/Citra/sdmc/Nintendo 3DS/[random 16-character ID]/[second random 16-character ID]/extdata/00000000/[your Pokemon game ID]/, with Pokefinder photos stored in the “album” subfolder inside that directory. If you’re on Windows, you can quickly access the AppData folder by pressing Win + R, typing %appdata%, and hitting enter, which skips the step of enabling hidden folders in your file explorer. For Mac users, the path starts with ~/Library/Application Support/Citra/, and follows the same structure after that. You can access the Library folder by holding down the Option key while clicking the Go menu in Finder, then selecting Library from the dropdown. Linux users can navigate directly to ~/.local/share/citra-emu/ to find the same file structure, though you may need to enable hidden files to see the .local folder.
You can look up your exact Pokemon game ID online if you’re playing a regional variant to avoid sorting through random extdata folders. For reference, the North American game IDs are 0004000000164800 for Pokemon Sun, 0004000000175E00 for Pokemon Moon, 00040000001B5000 for Pokemon Ultra Sun, and 00040000001B5100 for Pokemon Ultra Moon. If you run Citra in portable mode, all your save and extdata will be stored in the same folder as your Citra executable, so check there first if you run the emulator off a flash drive or external hard drive.
How to Access Pokefinder Photos Directly From In-Game
If you just want to view your photos and don’t need to share them on social media or edit them, you can pull them up right inside the game without leaving Citra, no folder digging required. I use this method all the time when I just want to flip through my photos to remember which Pokemon I’ve snapped already for my Pokedex completion challenge. It’s way faster than closing the game and digging through files, especially if you’re in the middle of a playthrough and don’t want to lose your progress.
To access your album in-game, open your Pokemon Sun/Moon/Ultra game, head to any Pokemon Center, and interact with the PC in the corner. Select the Pokefinder Album option, and you’ll see every photo you’ve taken during your playthrough, sorted by date taken. You can delete blurry or bad shots, mark favorites to find them faster later, or even view them full screen from this menu. If you take a photo you love right after snapping it, you can select the “save to SD card” option in the in-game share menu, which makes it way easier to find later in the generic Citra sdmc folder instead of digging through extdata.
Just note that any edits you make to the album in-game, like deleting photos, will be reflected in the extdata folder too, so make sure you copy any photos you want to keep to your computer before you delete them from the in-game album. If you want to export a photo directly from the in-game album, you can use Citra’s built-in screenshot hotkey (usually F12 by default) while viewing the photo full screen, and it will save to your default Citra screenshots folder for easy access.
Fixes for Missing Pokefinder Photos on Citra
It’s not uncommon to go looking for your Pokefinder photos only to find they’re nowhere to be found. I’ve had this happen twice, once after updating Citra to a new nightly build and once after moving my ROM folder to a different drive to free up space on my main SSD. Most of the time, the photos aren’t actually deleted, they’re just stored somewhere you didn’t think to check.
First, check if you’re logged into the correct Citra user profile—if you made a second profile for a different Nuzlocke playthrough or to play a regional variant of the game, your photos will be stored under that profile’s extdata instead of your main one. Next, check the Citra recycle bin inside the emulator’s built-in file manager: if you accidentally deleted save data recently, your old extdata might be stored there temporarily for up to 30 days before it’s permanently erased. If you still can’t find them, check if you have cloud saves enabled. If you sync your Citra data to a cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox, the extdata folder might not have synced fully yet, so give it a few minutes and refresh your folders.
If none of those steps work, run through this quick checklist of common causes for missing photos:
- Confirm you’re accessing the right user profile and game ID folder in your Citra files
- Verify your portable mode setting is the same as when you took the photos
- Check that your antivirus hasn’t quarantined any Citra save data folders recently
- Make sure you didn’t reset your game’s save file without backing up the extdata first
One important note: If you used a cheat code to unlock all Pokefinder items or infinite film, some older versions of Citra can corrupt the photo album save data, so it’s best to avoid those cheats if you care about keeping your captures.
Tips to Organize and Back Up Your Pokefinder Citra Photos
Once you find your Pokefinder photos, you don’t want to have to dig through those messy random ID folders every time you want to pull one up. A little organization up front can save you a ton of time later, especially if you take hundreds of photos across multiple playthroughs.
First, create a dedicated folder on your computer for all your Citra Pokemon captures, and copy any photos you want to keep there as soon as you take them. You can even rename them with the Pokemon name and location to make them easier to search for later, like “shiny-rockruff-route-2.jpg” instead of the generic file name the game gives them. Second, set up an automatic backup for your Citra extdata folder. Most cloud storage services let you select specific folders to sync, so add the extdata folder for your Pokemon game to your backup list, and you’ll never lose your photos even if your emulator crashes or your hard drive dies.
Never store your only copy of Pokefinder photos in the default Citra extdata folder—it’s too easy to accidentally delete it when you update the emulator, uninstall it to fix a bug, or move your ROMs to a new drive. Another fun tip: If you want to take higher quality Pokefinder photos, crank up Citra’s internal resolution to 4x or higher before you open the Pokefinder camera. Your photos will be way sharper than they ever were on the original 3DS, and they’ll look great when you post them online or use them as phone wallpaper. If you take a lot of photos, you can use a free image organizer tool to tag them by Pokemon type, location, or whether they feature a shiny Pokemon, so you can pull up exactly what you’re looking for in seconds.
At the end of the day, half the fun of playing 3DS Pokemon games on Citra is capturing those silly, perfect, once-in-a-playthrough Pokefinder shots that you can’t get anywhere else. Now that you know where to find pictures taken on Pokefinder Citra emulator, you can stop wasting time digging through random folders and start showing off your best captures to other Pokemon fans. If you run into any weird edge cases with your specific Citra setup, you can always ask for help in the Citra community forums, where other players share their own tips for managing in-game photos and save data. Just remember to back up your photos regularly, and you’ll have a full album of Pokemon memories to look back on for years.
