Preparing for scoped storage (Android Dev Summit '19)

Plan overview and best practice guide to the new storage model in Android 10.

Presented by: Roxanna Aliabadi‎, Zimuzo Ezeozue, Yacine Rezgui

#AndroidDevSummit event: Android Dev Summit 2019; re_ty: Publish; product: Android - General; fullname: Roxanna Aliabadi, Yacine Rezgui, Zimuzo Ezeozue;

[fannyjim]

No No No, Google, this is not enough for good user protection and usability, need more protection. You must add more protection mechanisms.
Please make access to files more complicated, you can do it, i believe in you.
I have a good idea for next version of Android: Storage Api should send access request directly to the Google Central Office each time when user wants access to a file(e.g: open or save pdf file or save xls file), user should get access to a file only after Google Central Office confirmation.

[kawaiiLittleDango]

file managers and backup apps are not the only apps that need legacy storage. This is ridiculous

[mlLich]

The idea of having protected storage is good, but the way it is implemented to put it mildly is terrible. Looks like these APIs were designed by first grade students. Is it that hard to create concrete type objects/enums and get rid of primitive types like Strings and Integers it is 2019 and you still use 2009 cursor apis.

[aleksandarmlazev]

And what about apps that have and introduce custom file formats with custom mime type and those files are created by user's time and efforts. I have a guitar notation app - Guitar Tabs X - and now I have to store the songs written by the user in the Downloads collection ?? Those songs can also be exported to MIDI or PDF and how you imagine those connected files to be scattered in different collections or worse - to be deleted if the user uninstalls the app??? Now the app creates one public external storage folder and stores everything inside. That folder can be easily deleted by the user but will stay if the user uninstalls/installs the app as there are the files created by the user! Why not keep that approach and let apps create and use one persistent folder?

[MikkoRantalainen]

@Android Developers: how about allowing full storage access for apps if the "user" is a developer? I'm fine with selecting myself which apps get full access to shared storage. If I only wanted to use "media files" I'd be using iOS already. I want hex editor, file manager, proper text editor and other stuff that makes no sense to any casual user. And I want root access when I decide it.

[ben]

I look forward to experiencing bugs on Spotify and Audible, as well as various other music/ audiobook players.

[giuseppe]

Thanks for this presentation, but the scoped storage it's terrible.
The idea behind is good, but it's impossible for most apps use those APIs. An example is an enterprise app which writes log files (and append lines while running) in folders on ext storage using pure java libraries like log4j. This will break most of enterprise apps and most of MDM solutions. A very easier approach could have been involved a standard permission request (maybe specifying the directory) and when granted allow developers to keep using standard java IO classes to do any operation inside the folder.

[maxchin]

I have to relearn Android technologies for every 2 years. I come and watch this video after camera stop working in 2020. Maybe another changes in 2022 and my app stop working again.

[lindentree]

Our app creates and manages files that are not supposed to be deleted "automatically" when the app in uninstalled. The user invested time and effort, the files are the result and they should not just disappear. I'm sure a lot of other apps have the same concern.
Hey Google, just provide a new folder that can survive an uninstall-reinstall event, or an event. And it's not about one single file or a one-by-one low performance copy through SAF, it's a large directory tree with fast access from native code. Maybe something the user can allow with OPEN_DOC_TREE or something, but accessible form native UNIX code and File class.
We're now preparing an update: Well ask permission from the users to copy the data from the current safe-from-uninstall location, easily accessible with file managers (to copy files in and out) to the hidden private folder. And with the big warning "don't forget to export everything as zip before uninstalling". Ridiculous.

[yasusaberi]

Google continually change Android, even when most of those changes are unnecessary

[javalc]

My applications generate and read files that are not media file, but application specific. The scoped storage does not fit such files, because they are not media file. Google says to handle such files in "download area", quite bad idea for the end user, as the download area is seen only as temporary storage.
I liked previous innovations in Android releases, but the scoped storage "innovation" deceives developers and also end users, as their user experience will be awkward in case of applications that handle files not related to media.

[sierrabravo]

Whre is the list of these new permissions? Just tell me where to find the info!!

[JimAndreas]

Hi All. I was here looking for clarity on how to drop some PDB (protein data bank) files on a phone and then find them using a 3D protein viewer (under development) programmatically. I was hoping for some sort of guidance. That this presentation was confusing is an understatement. Will keep looking.

[ugnn]

I am just an android user, updated owncloud and was not able to edit my files on storage because of implementing of scope storage... so reverted back to old version of the app.
Come here to understand how it function and I see words no visual representation...I think this android feature is like this presentation that look rough and messy ... I keep for now my old owncloud app version

[MikkoRantalainen]

Is there any reason an app SHOULD NOT request If not, why the framework does not automatically make all request persistable?

[hw]

What if I want to put all the short videos/images downloaded from 9gag/reddit/giphy etc to some specific folder, but not visible to the default gallery, and also want this folder to be kept when the app is uninstalled? Or copy/move to external SDCard?

[llothar]

I have a content management application. How can i add my own metadata to all files? Either embedded in the file data or as extended attributes to the file? How can i use inode tracking to find changes made to media now automatically? What if the media is a PDF, Zip File or ASCII text and not audio, image, video?

[khamidjonkhamidov]

I seem not to suggest my friends to be android developer as it is becoming worse. Even users want to have a better management of files by different apps they want. Now it seems not to be the case. Good bye free android world! Welcome endless limitations!

[ttukbaegi-breaker]

Deleting images created by other apps doesn't work. It only removes the entry from the content provider database, not the actual file. What's worse is that once you open the Photos app, the image gets re-registered into the database with a new ID. There are issue tracker reports. Please fix this before 11 comes out!

[tianna]

I'm using android 9.0. Please help me to get full external storage access without scoped storage.