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Android 4.4 Disables SD Card Access for Apps

posted by Dopefish on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the my-way-or-the-highway dept.
quadrox writes:

"It used to be possible for Android apps to access any kind of storage on an android device through the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission. Writing to the SD card is useful for many different kinds of apps, e.g. file managers or cloud storage synchronization. However, the latest version of Android will no longer allow apps to write anywhere on external storage media, instead apps will only be allowed to access app-specific folders on SD cards. Android Police has an excellent writeup of the changes and the implications for users."

[ED Note: This is bound to irritate power users that rely on their SD cards for additional device storage.]

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by threedigits on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:20PM

    by threedigits (607) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:20PM (#2562)

    Apparently only write permission is being restricted, thus applications can still read the whole SD card, but only write/delete in very specific places.

    This has two beneffits, namely: (1) applications will not left cruft behind when removed, and (2) they will not be able to erase or modify each other files.

    Sounds almost like a good idea...

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by mindriot on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:29PM

    by mindriot (928) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:29PM (#2756)
    I think I could live with that as long as I can purposely make exceptions, e.g. for file manager apps. I guess it's fair enough to have default settings that will be safe for most people, but at least keep the access to power user settings available (behind an "I know what I'm doing" checkbox if you must). I don't like being treated like I'm stupid...
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