How will OSMAND deal with the new insane Google storage policies?

[Michael Bechtold]

There have always been private data for which it is no harm to be access restricted in the private /Android/data structure.

But there can be huge maps shared between different Geo apps (user's choice, not Google's, nor app author's), which seems hard in the future.

How will OSMand deal with this situation?

TXs and cheers

Michael

[Xavier]

OSMAnd is subject to the security restrictions imposed upon it by the
Android OS, and Google decides what those security restrictions are.

If Google decides to restrict plural app's from accessing shared data,
there is nothing OSMAnd can do about that.

[Dmitry Prodchenko]

Hello!

Starting with the November updates, OsmAnd will no longer be able to support Shared storage. The other options will still be available.

[lodrog...@gmail.com]

from which android version this will be happened ?

[Tom Crocker]

I started a discussion about how to continue to access tracks, photos, etc at https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/discussions/12944

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[anyso...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, October 6, 2021 at 10:30:18 AM UTC+2 dm***ail.com wrote:

Hello!

Starting with the November updates, OsmAnd will no longer be able to support Shared storage. The other options will still be available.

Is it going to be  still possible to select (with Manually specified) a directory on the memory card? A directory that is not in the /data directory

AnyFIle

[lodrog...@gmail.com]

on the post 3, we can read that only one option will be not possible to work any more from the osmand app, because of the new policy from google. it is the next folder
/storage/emulated/0/osmand

we still can select from osmand settings this folder   /storage/emulated/0/android/data/
it is the best choice for me. Last 3.5 years into my device from andoid 7 up to 10, i had no issue

[anyso...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, October 7, 2021 at 9:22:30 PM UTC+2 lodr***ail.com wrote:

on the post 3, we can read that only one option will be not possible to work any more from the osmand app, because of the new policy from google. it is the next folder
/storage/emulated/0/osmand

Thanks for your answer. Sometime a direct confirmation is better than an indirect inference.

 

we still can select from osmand settings this folder   /storage/emulated/0/android/data/
it is the best choice for me. Last 3.5 years into my device from andoid 7 up to 10, i had no issue

Unfortunately, due to Google policy change, if you have Android 11 (or above), the last directory you quote

/storage/emulated/0/android/data/

will not be an useful choice. If you use this directory (or any subdirecotories or /storage/emulated/0/android/obb or the equivalent two directories of these two on the SD card) you would not be able to access the contents in any ways but from the inside of the app. This would make it more difficult (or impossible) to edit or change files, moves gpx files or audio/picture/video notes and so on.

For this reason it will be important (and actually it is already important in Android 11) that we can be able to select an arbitrary directory outside these "special" directories (I wrote "special" and not special because at file system level they are not declare anything special at all and the system already has a lot of special directories at his disposal than are not even reachable by the user. Having changed a normal directory to a "special" is just asking for troubles. At least they could have kept ..../android/data as it was and created a .../android/data-locked )

AnyFile

[Michael Bechtold]

Very much agree. And this is true for ANY geo app, BTW.

And I would appreciate if the app providers would not sheepishly bow to Google's slaughter, but rather fight, i.e. make their valid argument to get  an exception granted for those kind of apps.

Still the users would need to accept access to extra folders outside /Android/data, so there would not be any security issue.

In particular as people you deal with OSMand, Locus, Orux and alike are not those Instagram only type of folks :-)

Cheers

Michael

[lodrog...@gmail.com]

i think it will be nice to wait for the next versions of osmand and see what works or not

[Tom Crocker]

On Fri, 8 Oct 2021, 15:24 lodrog...@gmail.com, <lodrog...@gmail.com> wrote:

i think it will be nice to wait for the next versions of osmand and see what works or not

I think it would be helpful to know in advance. Otherwise people may find their files are moved to an inaccessible location without the opportunity to do anything about it.

[lodrog...@gmail.com]

osmand company has already test the new situation. If is was a problem, they would have written it in post 3

[Tom Crocker]

Vshcherb seems to say it may or may not be possible to access files depending on your phone https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/discussions/12944#discussioncomment-1455432