“some apps have a core use case that requires broad access to files on a device, but can't access them efficiently using the privacy-friendly storage best practices. Android provides a special app access called all-files access for these situations.”
“For example… anti-virus apps… file manager apps, backup and restore apps, and document management apps“
NextCloud provides backup, restore, and document management.
I guess you may know more about this than the official android docs, but maybe you are just being blinkered by some incorrect assumption?
Maybe we would be best to frame this another way. What permissions do NextCloud need to be able to replicate “Google One”? The complete replacement of Google drive (the service, not the app - you are consistently conflating the two) is what they aim to be. Is that something that can be done with SAF, or are Google using elevated permissions to lock competitors out?
It's true some of our functionality can be rebuilt if we rewrite this functionality with SAF - even though it makes the user experience a bit worse. We have a file manager/document management app, which fits the use case for the full permission. There are some functions that are popular with some users like syncing a whole SD card, the download folder or the data of specific apps (in Android/data - some users use our app in a way as backup) that are just not possible with SAF. We get the security concerns from Google, but Box has this permission, so do quite some others, so our preferred solution is to re-gain the permission rather than bring back part of the functionality.
The good news is that this morning Google got back to us and told us that on resubmission we will regain the permission we need and our users regain all functionality within a few days.
So, this seems to have been resolved in a nice way. Thanks, all for the support!
“For example… anti-virus apps… file manager apps, backup and restore apps, and document management apps“
https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/manage-a...
NextCloud provides backup, restore, and document management.
I guess you may know more about this than the official android docs, but maybe you are just being blinkered by some incorrect assumption?
Maybe we would be best to frame this another way. What permissions do NextCloud need to be able to replicate “Google One”? The complete replacement of Google drive (the service, not the app - you are consistently conflating the two) is what they aim to be. Is that something that can be done with SAF, or are Google using elevated permissions to lock competitors out?