Cache to External SD Card

[Terence Eden]

Morning all,
My cache is currently 1.4GB (I know!).  Is there any way to set the cache to work from the external SD card where I have plenty of space?
Thanks
Terence

[Patrick Julien]

It's always on the SD card. You mean a second one? It should be possible to use a symlink to do that

[Mark Scholes]

> It's always on the SD card. You mean a second one? It should be possible to use a symlink to do that

Just tried this, unfortunately as the external sd card is formatted to FAT, symlinks don't work. Would it be possible to choose where to save the downloads from within the app?

[Patrick Julien]

how would the UI for such a selection process work?

[Mark Scholes]

I suppose you either go the geeky way, directory picker, eg http://www.bgreco.net/directorypicker/

Or better would be to parse the available partitions, as a user "df" lists, on my s3:

Filesystem             Size   Used   Free   Blksize

/dev                   416M    84K   416M   4096

/mnt/asec              416M     0K   416M   4096

/mnt/obb               416M     0K   416M   4096

/system                  1G     1G   373M   4096

/efs                    19M     9M    10M   4096

/cache                1007M    17M   990M   4096

/data                   11G     8G     3G   4096

/storage/sdcard0        11G     8G     3G   4096

/storage/extSdCard      29G    13G    16G   16384

So it would seem that presenting an option of available partitions and their free space would be a better, but more complex option

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6824463/how-to-get-all-the-mount-point-information-for-android-device

http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/39542/confused-by-the-many-locations-of-the-virtual-sdcard

The problem being of course offering just the real options. Google don't seem interested in a) a second sd card, or b) sd cards in general

I'm perfectly happy with editing an advanced config file myself.

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Mark Scholes

[Patrick Julien]

Sorry for the delay, started a response, got distracted and forgot about this.

I wasn't really asking how to implement but what are your feelings on how the UI should look?  Maybe some other app you particularly enjoyed.  I saw you posted to an already well made widget, so I guess that's your answer then.

[Damien Moore]

+1 on this feature request. 

>> It's always on the SD card. You mean a second one? It should be possible to use a symlink to do that

>Just tried this, unfortunately as the external sd card is formatted to FAT, symlinks don't work. 

I am using a Galaxy Note 2 with an external SD card (FAT) that also doesn't get used by Listen Up. If it was formatted as Ext4 would it be possible to use the symlink workaround? If so, can someone explain what needs to be symlinked?

[Patrick Julien]

Added a ticket to implement this someday in the future.  I am still unsure what a good looking UI for this should look like, so might be awhile still

[Thub]

A simple way of handling the UI might be to show radio buttons to choose between a few suggested paths based on available data partitions.  They wouldn't even have to show the full path, just the name of the mount point.  It would be nice to show the full path on the preferences menu though.  You could also have a "custom..." radio button that would allow you to type in a full path, or maybe bring up a picker.  I imagine something like this:

• sdcard0
  
• sdcard1
• Custom...
  

I don't know if there's a reliable way of identifying removable media, but it would be nice if it could be simplified as something like this:

• Internal storage
• Removable storage
• Custom...

At least for my Samsung Galaxy S2 running Jelly Bean, but depending on which app I'm using, my internal storage could be called "sdcard0" or "external_sd", while my removable storage could be "sdcard1" or "extSdCard".  Really, what people care about is whether or not data is being stored on the removable card, so if it could be presented that way it seems ideal.

[Rod]

I want to bump this one, I would gladly pay several dollars for a paid version for it.  I have had a 'low storage' warning a few times recently so I installed 'DiskUsage' and found that I had 2GB of my 5GB usable space was in podcasts from Listen Up!  I changed my setting to only store 20 (I usually have 10-15 in my queue) and that freed up a lot of storage. I have 12GB free space on my external SD card which I would prefer to use for the podcasts.

Also, maybe an easy addition would be a setting to remove (delete) the download after it has been listened to.  That is where most of my space was used, I only had 10 in my queue but 70 that had already been listened to!

Since no one ever gave you a good example of the UI, here are two free apps that handle it exactly the same way.  This may be a standard thing now since these are identical:

Locus Free - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=menion.android.locus&hl=en

under Settings > Miscellaneous > Default directories > Set Root Directory

GCDroid - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gcdroid&hl=en

under Settings > Storage > Root folder

Thanks!

Rod

[Patrick Julien]

Well it sounds like the smaller cache size is what you're looking for.

My feeling around this feature is I would offer it only on jelly bean and up.  A new permission is available to only access the application directory and nothing else but on all SD cards, not just the internal storage.  This would prevent listen up from seeing things like pictures, etc., I don't like it when other applications do that but before jelly bean, it was necessary for me to do it.  This would allow me:

- Access the SD cards with an eye on removing the "full" SD card permission that allows listen up to see everything on the SD cards.

- Keep in mind i consider listen up idle ware at this point.  I haven't made a release in over a year, so don't hold your breath.

I would like to make a new maintenance release soon, but it's exactly that, maintenance, it fixes the 3-4 bugs that have been reported in the last year.

[Robert]

On Tuesday, March 31, 2015 at 2:54:27 PM UTC-7, Patrick Julien wrote:

Well it sounds like the smaller cache size is what you're looking for.

My feeling around this feature is I would offer it only on jelly bean and up.  A new permission is available to only access the application directory and nothing else but on all SD cards, not just the internal storage.  This would prevent listen up from seeing things like pictures, etc., I don't like it when other applications do that but before jelly bean, it was necessary for me to do it.  This would allow me:

- Access the SD cards with an eye on removing the "full" SD card permission that allows listen up to see everything on the SD cards.

- Keep in mind i consider listen up idle ware at this point.  I haven't made a release in over a year, so don't hold your breath.

Would you consider releasing the source code (i.e. "toss it on github") so others can potentially hack on it?  

[Patrick Julien]

Why? Idle ware works for me

[Robert]

You don't have to do anything you don't want to do.

I was  thinking that if I had the source code, it might be interesting to attempt to fix/tweak the particular things that affect my experience.  This might result in you getting patches back (which you could use or ignore -- as dealing with them takes time.)

There might be other people like me.

(Key word "might")

When you say Idleware, it's not clear if Idle is a nice way of saying "I'm unlikely to ever work on it again".  Releasing the code lets other people move the software forward.

-R

[Patrick Julien]

Idleware just means when I have time.

Originally using market was just a convenient way of distributing to a couple of friends.  Then it became more serious when the downloads starting coming in.  But the downloads were pretty much for the free version.  And it became incredibly time consuming, like 40-60 hours a week, to support users of the free version.

Combine that with what I call "drive-by" reviews or people using star ratings to blackmail their way to features, and it pretty much means I'm not interested in getting new users anymore.

So yes, I still work on it, working on the code is still fun but my effort is more in line with what it is, a hobby.  I expect to scrap the free version with the 3.0 release and either make the regular version free or make the regular version the maximum price, because again, don't want new users.

[Robert]

Thanks for the clarification and update..

-R