G+_Roy Hembree Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 I would love to hear conversation about this topic on All About Android or This Week in Google, perhaps with a guest from Google who can speak to it. Originally shared by Tod Liebeck KitKat will make your SD Card completely useless: per the Android API specification, apps can no longer write files to your SD card. And Samsung is following it. This only applies to dual-storage devices, i.e., devices with a user-writable internal flash storage AND a removable SD card. From http://source.android.com/devices/tech/storage/index.html: "The WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission must only grant write access to the primary external storage on a device. Apps must not be allowed to write to secondary external storage devices, except in their package-specific directories as allowed by synthesized permissions." If your device has user-accessible internal flash storage, your SD Card is a "secondary external storage device". What this means is that with KitKat, applications will no longer be able create, modify, or remove files and folders on your external SD card. As a for-instance, you can no longer use a file manager to copy files from your computer to the SD card over a network. This ability, which has existed since the beginning of Android, has been taken away. The only stated reason for this removal of functionality is that, "Restricting writes in this way ensures the system can clean up files when applications are uninstalled." I do not pretend to understand this logic. Apps are still allowed to write in arbitrary directories on the primary storage (with the appropriate permission), but are denied the same access to external storage. Samsung has implemented this feature with their KitKat OTA updates. Note3 users are now complaining that FX File Explorer can no longer write to their external SD cards. There are solutions to this problem for users with root access. Users without root access appear to be screwed. I'm not quite certain how Google intends for you to place files on your SD card. Perhaps you have to use proprietary Google apps that contain permissions unavailable to the rest of the developer world. Perhaps you're supposed to put everything on the cloud and pay carrier data fees to get it there. Perhaps you're supposed to use some kind of WIRE to attach your WIRELESS device to your computer and have the computer do that work for you. In my opinion this is a horrible misstep by Google and the Android Open Source Project. Functionality has been removed without reason, to the severe detriment of users and developers alike. I apologize for not bringing this to everyone's attention when KitKat 4.4 was released, but it was not mentioned in the Android 4.4 changes document: http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.4.html. It's only mentioned in the article on source.android.com. I was only made aware of its existence from user reports as a result of Samsung implementing this change in its KitKat OTA updates. http://source.android.com/devices/tech/storage/index.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Joseph Cappellino Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 This works in CyanogenMod. They may have re-enabled it, but they don't usually do stuff like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Alan Char Posted February 20, 2014 Share Posted February 20, 2014 I ran into this today. What was weird, is that there was no error message or anything when ES File Explorer tried to delete a file on the external SD card. It just continued like everything was fine. You would think that the system would return some sort of error that the app would surface to the user Was it not checking for errors? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Randy J Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Am I the only one that isn't bothered by this? I use the external SD card for music/videos, etc. Just don't buy an 8GB phone or tablet. Or is there something I am missing here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Alan Char Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Randy J For me, it's easier to manage content on my phone instead of taking the SD card out, sticking it in some sort of adapter, then plugging that into a computer. The most common case is when I want to delete a video after viewing it. The other common case is downloading content to the external SD card over the network, which was mentioned in the article. If I connect my mobile device to my laptop with a USB data cable, I can still use the Android File Transfer utility to manage the external SD card, which is a little easier than dealing with a micro SD card. But being able to use a file manager app on the external SD card is better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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