> what they actually need seems to be a massive user positive
So positive for the user that they filed a bug report about it?
>I suspect people want their entire photo folders mirrored into Nextcloud from the device
That isn't remotely the contention, nor do photos even qualify. Further, the reason this company gives for refusing to use the obviously more suitable structured storage API is that they don't want their files -- presumably mirrored from the cloud storage -- visible to other apps. Their complaint is technical nonsense and doesn't pass an ounce of scrutiny.
I think they're trying to keep their story simple, for the sake of clarity. I believe the nextcloud team when they say they need the permission.
Part of the issue is that nextcloud has many use cases, including ones where your files don't get synced to your mobile device until you touch the file, replacing them with a reference to a file. It's cool cause you can access and manage a tb of pictures or documents from a 64gb android.
I don't (and I do use NC). The sentence "SAF cannot be used, as it is for sharing/exposing our files to other apps" is simply wrong and llm_nerd is right that SAF should be able to handle that use case,see
https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/shared/d...
There are some restrictions regarding which directories you can access, but for most use-cases it should be perfectly fine. It's also not that this should come as a surprise to them. In fact, there's an issue about this from the NC team themselves from August '22:
https://github.com/nextcloud/android/issues/10123
Why they still think SAF cannot be used is a mystery to me.
Even if that interface is insecure and harmful to users ?
As an industry we've learnt a lot about how apps siphon and sell your data. And I appreciate this probably doesn't apply to NextCloud but it can be difficult to build an API that is flexible and secure so you will get casualties.
It's obviously not a security problem or a harm when used by an open source file synchronization app, and Google is being unsophisticated with its policy here.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/apps-with-15m...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/phantomlance-spying-campaign-b...
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2023/05/23/android-app-breaki...
There are also examples of apps using the filesystem to try to detect rooted devices, an invasion of user privacy:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/g6cdl6/apps_have_a...
But does the policy solve this problem? The first link is a file explorer app. In theory that app should be granted the permision by Google. They could get established and then start collecting data later. So how does the policy help?
In practice the only way it helps is by Google basically telling everyone other than big trusted orgs no, and that's not an open ecosystem.
Why not just give the user a big fat warning, even telling them that apps which request this permission have been known to steal data in the past, then let them decide for themselves?
> that's not an open ecosystem
No, it is not. Did someone claim it was?
The open ecosystem of Android is that users can choose to install apps from any source they like. Apps like Syncthing-Fork and (full-featured) Nextcloud are available from other sources including F-Droid. Google does a couple things to privilege its own store, though I think those are being mitigated due to legislation and litigation.
No, we said that's what we want it to be.
(btw, not singling out Google - IMHO Apple is bad here too. This duopoly in the smartphone space is a major PITA)
So a backup app should add support for every Android application that the user is likely to back up?
For example, without using Google'' backup you can't backup the data of other apps, such as games' progress.
Exactly. Many people use Nextcloud's auto-upload to backup important data from their phone. In addition to photos, I use it to backup FreeOTP and WhatsApp, for instance. This does not work with the version from Google Play, see
https://github.com/nextcloud/android/issues/14334
EDIT: After some research, I think even that use case should be possible with SAF, you just need to move your backups to external storage that you can access via SAF.
it stopped working well or at all over the last 2 years or so. I think if a simple "allow access to the photo folder" would have fixed it they out have used it. maybe it doesn't get the events when a photo is made?
Then request access to their media folder. You don't need full disk access.
PDFs that I download live in downloads folder (which you can't give access to for some reason anyway).
Music lives elsewhere and so on.
Downloads is blocked because it would include everything you download, possibly including private stuff you don't want other apps to access. Just save the stuff that you want synced to a different folder.
I guess if you really want everything synced (e.g. doing a full device backup) then that would fall under Google's exception for backup apps and it would be allowed full disk access. Those are kinda separate use cases though. Maybe Nextcloud could make a separate "Nextcloud Device Backup" app which does that?
- If you want to lose time for 2 hours, please do yourself this questionable favour but I do not want to do that because some "wise" people cannot comprehend that some people want copy of entire thing, not one folder, entire thing.
> Downloads is blocked because it would include everything you download, possibly including private stuff you don't want other apps to access. The point: This is cloud application that connects to server that sits on my desk on NUC.
Do you understand that in the (Google)-(Open Source)-(Own Server) the Google part is one that most reasonable people consider not private.
> Just save the stuff that you want synced to a different folder.
Do you move entire folders or every file each time you download something because app cannot backup it - or do you change app. What if that's the only app that does it privately?
> Those are kinda separate use cases though.
Maybe it is not system developer job to decide for me that I want to give application the permission to do what I want application to do. It is not system nor developer job to stop owner (administrator) from what owner decides to do.
> Maybe Nextcloud could make a separate "Nextcloud Device Backup" app which does that?
Maybe competitors should not have permission on deciding what their competitors should do.
Google essentially makes everything private so cumbersome to use that it own solution seems easy.
>it makes sense to let the users give it access to all the files on the phone
It doesn't even pretend to be a backup app, and further the permission we're talking about is limited to external storage (though that is a nebulous term on many Android devices where internal storage is split-brained on being internal and partly external).
Further saying "let the user decide" works great in theory and with a considered, rational userbase. In reality it means that everyone just says sure to everything, and soon all of the user's data is exfiltrated and everyone is whining that Google/Apple/et al should have forseen this.
I'm sure they would happily allow you to select the folders you want to give permissions to, but I think that's not possible anymore.
So if you want to sync a local data folder that stores, for example, the tracks you record with your GPS, you cannot do it without full access unless your GPS app allows you to select a shared folder to store its data.
0: https://developer.android.com/about/versions/11/privacy/storage
1: https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/13/nextcloud_play_store_complaint/
SAF provides both provider and consumer APIs, and from the language NextCloud uses, I get the feeling they might've missed the consumer API here. Had NextCloud said "we want the user to be able to select the Download folder and certain external media directories" then I would've thought the restrictions are the main problem, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
I went through the same with Syncthing, and now I install it from out of Google Play, where it doesn't need Google approval to do the All Files Permission API call.
I understand why the API changes and the hardening of the Android system, but it's also true you're locked out from certain folders even when on developer mode and it feels weird.
It is correct that you cannot access private app folders, meaning stuff like /data/data, /Android/data, /Android/obb. But this is nothing new and you basically need a rooted device to access them. You can however access anything on external storage, which is typically where apps would store data you would want to sync and which would cover by far most use cases from users. At the moment, users are mostly complaining that only media files are synced, but not documents. SAF would solve this.
> I'm sure they would happily allow you to select the folders you want to give permissions to, but I think that's not possible anymore.
That is absolutely possible:
https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/shared/d...
So, following a bit the example I was giving, if you want to sync data from another app to backup it (or whatever), and that App stores its data in the default data folder assigned by Android, since Android 11 it's going to be very difficult to do it.
I used to sync some of those folders with Syncthing in Android, and since Android 11 things have gotten complicated (meaning, you need 'all files' access, and even then, some things might not be accessible). [0]
0: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/android-11-and-syncthing-what-can-be-synchronised/17100/2The Google Play store (not Android the OS) is now limiting access to the old API, it has nothing to do with Android 11.
The new API does not work with Linux open(). Some projects (like Syncthing) don't want to put in the work to switch to the new API.
I hope that clears things up.
Not very familiar with the NextCloud client, as I haven't used it much, but in the case of Syncthing (and this is totally guessing from what I remember from reading the forums back when the Android 11 upgrade happened): I don't think they don't want to put the work to switch to the new API, I think they want to access places they won't be able to access with the new API, so that's why they won't change the calls.
From what I've gathered, getting access to a single user-picked file via SAF isn't too painful, but for browsing a whole directory tree it's more annoying having to use a completely new API for that, doubly so when you're using a library that expects regular files, plus performance is somewhat lacking, too (judging from complaints and bug reports I've seen, both in that it is easy to run into performance pitfalls, but also that even best-case performance is still worse than classic file access).
[1] I think something like that was actually implemented for Android 11 onwards, judging from https://source.android.com/docs/core/storage/scoped#using-sc...? Although possibly still at some noticeable performance cost.
That pretty much matches my experience. Single file picker flows can often be implemented with a simple callback.
But for folders it falls apart.
Thanks for mentioning scoped storage. Maybe that provides some sort of solution. I vaguely remember when I was first dealing with this circa 2021 that they had some sort of a low-performance solution that was supposed to work for NDK code.
You can select any file you could before on shared external storage. You can't select private app directories which were always off limits from other apps just like on iOS.
---
[0] On Android 11 (API level 30) and higher, you cannot use the ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT_TREE intent action to request access to the following directories:
- The root directory of the internal storage volume.
- The root directory of each SD card volume that the device manufacturer considers to be reliable, regardless of whether the card is emulated or removable. A reliable volume is one that an app can successfully access most of the time.
- The Download directory.
Furthermore, on Android 11 (API level 30) and higher, you cannot use the ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT_TREE intent action to request that the user select individual files from the following directories:
- The Android/data/ directory and all subdirectories.
- The Android/obb/ directory and all subdirectories.
[1] On Android 11 (API level 30) and higher, you cannot use the ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT intent action to request that the user select individual files from the following directories:
- The Android/data/ directory and all subdirectories.
- The Android/obb/ directory and all subdirectories.
0: https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/shared/documents-files#document-tree-access-restrictions
1: https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/shared/documents-files#document-access-restrictions
edit: fixed readability and a link
Google Play, or at least that's what they say in their docs, might allow the use of the MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE "all files" API call "...if your app includes a use case similar to any of the following: File managers, Backup and restore apps, [...] Document management apps ..." [0][1]. And the Nextcloud app sounds very similar to that.
Of course, it's all "Subject to Google Play review and approval.", but why they used to grant that permission to Nextcloud with no problem and revoked it suddenly... I have no idea.
---
0: https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/manage-all-files#all-files-access-google-play
1: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/10467955#zippy=%2Cpermitted-uses-of-the-all-files-access-permissionThing is, Nextcloud doesn't need that permission since they can do what they do now with SAF which is how Google determines eligibility for the exception. That is - if you can do it with SAF, you don't need complete access to all private data via MANAGE permission.
I see your point, but why isn't this the case for document management apps? Also, Nextcloud can be extended with plugins, some of them falling in the document management category.
> Further saying "let the user decide" works great in theory and with a considered, rational userbase.
Nextcloud is mostly used by people that like to self-host their services, so in this case we fall into the rational userbase category.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplemobi... or on github.
https://www.androidauthority.com/simple-mobile-tools-acquisi...
Use the Fossify fork instead:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.fossify.ga...
What they do after opening the files is very different, and irrelevant. FWIW I use both Nextcloud and that gallery app.
Meanwhile google drive gets to be installed as a system app
Right, so you don't know the app. What about getting informed first?
I use Nextcloud to backup files to the cloud. I want it to access my files.
Perhaps you should get informed as well.
In the end this is again app developers refusing to do the work to protect privacy and trying to push through the laziest most privacy voilating solution because it's less work.
What did I say that was wrong? The comment I was answering to - that I assume you read - says: "This Nextcloud app seems to be [...] It isn't a file manager, it isn't a backup utility, it's a cloud provider with local mirroring."
Which is wrong, isn't it?
So let me ask you, how does this:
> Hardening down and making apps only request precisely what they actually need
Relate to Google Play Services? It seems to relate only to third party apps, doesn't it?
File managers Backup and restore apps Anti-virus apps Document management apps On-device file search Disk and file encryption Device-to-device data migration
This Nextcloud app seems to be an app that mirrors your Nextcloud storage to your device, and I cannot understand why it would need all access to any other data stored on the external device -- with the enormous risk that entails -- much less that can't be selectively picked by the user. It isn't a file manager, it isn't a backup utility, it's a cloud provider with local mirroring. I get why Google told them to do things otherwise.
Another comment mentions this is "bad faith" security and that's just overly cynical. Android and iOS both suffered from basically trusting app developers, and both were burned for it. Hardening down and making apps only request precisely what they actually need seems to be a massive user positive.
[1] - https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/manage-a... - the exclusions can be found at the bottom.