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Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

(peabee.substack.com)
1192 points gniting | 3 comments | 29 Mar 25 21:26 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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billfruit ◴[30 Mar 25 02:52 UTC] No.43520832[source]▶
Some apps like Obsidian needs permission to access every file on the device. It is surprising Obsidian isn't getting called out on that very much.
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wkat4242 ◴[30 Mar 25 02:53 UTC] No.43520836[source]▶
It's because it stores the files there so you can sync them with other permissions. And also that your notes aren't deleted like they would be if they were stored in the internal app storage. There's more granular options for filesystem access available but if you implement them you limit yourself to the latest Android releases.

According to Exodus it has no trackers and it's an open source app also so you can see what it does (though tbh I didn't check that for the mobile one)

If there's apps to call out there's way worse than Obsidian.

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billfruit ◴[30 Mar 25 03:16 UTC] No.43520959[source]▶
Obsidian isn't open source by most reports.

Surely Obsidian do not to see all files on the device, it only really needs to see the files the user needs it to see.

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danparsonson ◴[30 Mar 25 05:43 UTC] No.43521657[source]▶
There isn't a permission for that though - it's all or nothing. I agree that it should be more granular; each app should really have its own scoped file storage area by default, with "access anything" being reserved for file browsers, backup software, etc.
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1. billfruit ◴[30 Mar 25 05:58 UTC] No.43521721[source]▶
Android already has support for scoped storage. So it is not clear why Obisidian needs the whole file system permission.
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2. wkat4242 ◴[30 Mar 25 12:15 UTC] No.43523518[source]▶
Yes but only later Android versions. If you start supporting those you need to move to the corresponding API level and that means to drop support for older ones. They probably don't want to do that yet. This one is Android 10 and up, and the Android 10 version of scoped storage was quite basic IIRC so you probably want an even later one. I guess they still want to support older phones.
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3. billfruit ◴[30 Mar 25 13:29 UTC] No.43524033[source]▶
At the cost of much lower data privacy for users.