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The recently lost file upload feature in the Nextcloud app for Android

(nextcloud.com)
410 points morsch | 1 comments | 14 May 25 05:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.803s | source
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moonshot5 ◴[14 May 25 16:07 UTC] No.43986181[source]▶
AOSP platform dev here. (Filesystem) Opinions my own, I don't speak for Google.

Disclaimer: I don't use nextcloud, and have not looked at their app specifically, this is just a surface level observation from my relatively informed perspective.

My take: SAF would work for this use case, as others have already mentioned.

Google Drive does not have the permissions that next cloud claims Google is giving preferential treatment to, and is delivered via the Play store in the same way nextcloud's app is.

As others have also observed, permissions such as MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE have been rampantly abused in the past, often in horrific ways.

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1. dxuh ◴[15 May 25 05:44 UTC] No.43992185[source]▶
> As others have also observed, permissions such as MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE have been rampantly abused in the past, often in horrific ways.

I understand that great care should be taken when this permission is granted to new apps, but NextCloud is well known and on top of that it is a file management app. If anything, apps like that should have this permission.

If you plan to phase it out completely, then the alternatives have to be good enough, which judging from some of the child comments, they are not. I have never developed for Android (and likely never will, because of stuff like this), so I cannot judge properly.

It's also my understanding that the Google Drive App is just some UI over cloud storage. All the interesting bits like Backup are not handled through it and Google Drive gets preferential treatment for this. Additional permissions are required to emulate such functionality.