Comment by jeroenhd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeroenhd | Hacker News Reader

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Google is working on that with scoped storage, but a lot of old code doesn't work with that yet and dropping the API would break tons of apps. They've been trying to kill general external storage for this reason since Android 4.4, but every time there's huge blowback from users and developers because "they're trying to take our file explorers" or whatever.

In KDE Connect you already need to use the modern API to pick a location for file browsing and it works fine. I picked the entire virtual storage area and that's what's available through remote browsing, but I could've picked a single directory. If all apps supported this, we'd be a lot better off.

Of course, there's a perverse incentive to put off the transition as long as possible so that stalking libraries can make more money. I think Google is moving very closely to forcing the new API with the release of Android 12, which would mean that most app developers can't really put off updating much longer.

They could have made the transition much more straightforward by just making the permissions system more granular (i.e. let the user pick a directory instead of simply asking storage access yes/no) and leaving the existing file APIs intact otherwise, just throw a permission error if you're accessing anything outside of the granted scope.

Instead they tried to force through a completely new API that isn't compatible with anything that came beforehand, isn't compatible with code that must have a classic file handle and cannot easily be changed (native libraries, parts of the Android API itself), introduces exciting new bugs and has worse performance.

Plus at the same time they seem hellbent on hiding the true, original location of files on the file system, so a) if an app needs to ensure continuing access to a file, it needs to copy it to its own storage (Yay, dozens of copies of the same file) b) this breaks any usages and file formats that don't consist of a single, atomic, fully standalone file (HTML files, playlists, subtitles, multi-part archives, ...).

The "new API" has been available since Android 4.4 and was encouraged as default approach because it also worked with cloud storages, Chromebooks and other environment.

Please don't write this misleading stuff, nothing about SAF is new. It's just that it was easier for developers to hardcode paths and crap all over the storage than to open the file dialog.

Using the SAF is quite a bit more complex than simply prompting the user to pick a folder and then using that as your base path, though.

Plus once apps developers were more seriously forced to use the SAF by recent Android versions, I've seen enough bug reports about actual shortcomings and performance problems of the SAF API on the Android bug tracker even for more recent Android versions.

And Google's simultaneous insistence on only allowing inter-app file sharing via content://-URIs has definitively broken all multi-file file formats, with no official replacement available.

I don't think other concerns are less important to "privacy" concerns.

Each restriction just makes certain ideas/project impossible or less ideal [1].

Honestly as an Android dev, I will prefer devices come with these restrictions by default. Then there should be a "I don't give a f*ck" button in the device developer options settings.

The option can be hidden behind 10 screens. Audit rails can be added. Anything but completely eliminating power-use in the name of privacy.

1 - I couldn't implement some telemetry in this project because google yanked the ability to read process stats: https://elvischidera.com/2020-11-23-building-distributed-and...

They could have required a permission instead. Or inform the user about the process I'm observing.

The data I was looking to gather has nothing to do with the user, but the task itself.

Another example is the restrictions introduced in the Bluetooth API.

Not all use of these APIs are intended for stalking. It doesn't make sense to keep "dumbing" down devices.

PS: I'm not arguing about the validity of your concerns. I just wanted to add an alternate take which I felt was missing in this thread.

> but every time there's huge blowback from users and developers because "they're trying to take our file explorers" or whatever.

This is a justified blowback. The file explorers and system utilities (apps users actually want to access the whole file system) should be given full rights. Access rights should be managed, not denied for all the apps altogether. I would introduce separate permissions for full file system (incl. OS and other apps files) access, access to user files space only, access to specific directories.

PS: Can anybody recommend a really good file system explorer for Android? I would pay any reasonable single-time price but no ads and no subscriptions please.

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