Comment by izacus
7 months ago
They did, the upstading app developers like this one just forced people to give them full access to all data in the app (or the app wouldn't run) and ended up not implementing scoped storage - something HNers outright demanded several times and exposed as a good upside of iOS.
So stick had to come out. The full filesystem access is now reserved for apps that manage full filesystem (e.g. file explorers) and that's it. Scoped storage APIs were introduced in 2013, 11 years ago and Play started enforcing them in 2020, so the experiment with scary warnings was running for 7 years and developers refused to give up on that sweet full private file access.
Granted, SAF is quite a shitty API.
It's my phone. It's my data. It's my choice to install the app. It's my choice to grant the permissions to all files. Because guess what, I'm using the app to sync all my files.
I really can't agree with Google in this particular case.
I couldn't agree more. Given how much frigging hoops I had to jump through to get my Obsidian over syncthing setup to sync with my company iPhone - I nearly gave up.
I grew up when computers didn't babysit me and tried to act like the good old GDR, knowing every thing better than their citicens.
Nowadays, I feel more and more hindered by computers, not enabled. Computers used to be a production device (I could create things with them).
Phones are not a computer - phones are a just "consume like we want you to" device.
The problem is, I want my phone to be a creation device. A device that allows me to create content, text, to do lists, shopping lists, ideas and store them. And(!) sync them using the tools I decide to use. And not force me to use tools I friggin hate, because they just don't get the job done.
I gave up. My phone now is just a communication and utility device, and thus I don’t feel the urge to upgrade until it can’t do those tasks. I went back to computers (and Linux) to be able to just use them as a computer.
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How did you get iPhone Syncthing + Obsidian working? I was under the impression that it was basically impossible to share Möbius Sync's directory with Obsidian.
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The java.io.File API isn't removed from Android, nor inaccessible. You can absolutely still use it. Google Play has chosen to not accept it on their store unless you justify it (to their non working bots). In this case, the dev chooses to just drop the entire app because maintaining it just for Fdroid feels pointless.
There's very few permissions on android that are system/privileged/preinstalled.
That's why you can install through F-Droid right?
You don't have root. Google does.
I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it's not exactly a secret when you bought it.
That’s still not your product though. You only bought a licence.
Flash your favorite open firmware, enjoy and let regular users who cannot do that avoid permission extortion. The world has needs and issues, it is not spinning around your skillset.
And yet you'll blame Android when some app steals a lot of data just like it always happens on this site.
Have you considered that it's a plural "you" that you're choosing to pit yourself against, with different people each weighing different complaints?
Almost by definition, the people who argue strongly for free use of their hardware and software are almost never the same people who argue strongly for safety and security restrictions. You seem to be frustrated by a contradiction or inconsistency that doesn't exist.
It's true that Google can't win the hearts of both sides, but they surely know that -- you don't need to get so personally frustrated on their behalf. It's just a company with a product in a market, and the market is never going to be uniform.
It's an open-source program, it shouldn't be held to the same standards as a closed-source program that just shuttles all of your data to someone else's computer.
The risk here isn't misuse of the data, it's that some exploit is found in the code, and the additional protection of limiting its filesystem access is marginal (but nice to have).
So Google drive doesn’t have full filesystem access anymore?
I mean, syncthing is exactly the kind of app I would expect to have full filesystem access.
Why? I want it to have access to the folders I want it to sync, not everything on my device.
Seems like a perfect fit for SAF.
> Seems like a perfect fit for SAF.
Except SAF is slow as hell, working on multiple files means separate calls for every little thing like file size via java API. Means everything going to be VERY slow and drain battery a lot. I've seen test from 2019 where directory listing operation is 25-50 times slower in SAF
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/130261278
In a perfect world, what Syncthing does would be handled at the OS level and all OSes would seamlessly interoperate. In the real world the OS vendors are hostile to interoperability so the only way to get that is with a third-party tool that has OS-level access.
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For 3 years now I can't open my Downloads or Pictures folder without root, because their shitty API is unbelievely bad that it would take around 30 minutes to open a folder with that many files.
I want it to be able to browse to another app's private folder to sync the data of that app to my computer. If browsing to there it's not the job of syncthing then I need a file manager with those permissions.
No. Not in my world. Because I actually want to be able to backup my phone - not only demarcated parts of it.
I want to be able to get all data from my phone - regardless of what it is and what app put it there.
If I decide to only sync specific folders. So be it. But I want to be able to sync "/"
I use syncthing to back up my entire Android phone.
At least the parts it can access, anyway: /storage/emulated/0