Random Musings on the R Developer Preview 1 - What Will Piss Off Users [CommonsWare]

About Android R (11) preview version:

The phrasing around the file and directory access restrictions puts the blame on developers. How dare we ask for the Downloads/document tree, or for files in Android/data/directories!

In reality, developers don’t do that. Developers simply fire off ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT, ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT_TREE, or ACTION_CREATE_DOCUMENTIntents. Where the user winds up choosing is up to the user.

So, in reality, the restrictions listed in this section will be placed on users**, not developers**. And I have absolutely no idea what sort of messaging Google could use in the Storage Access Framework UI that would justify to the user blocking them from navigating to certain portions of external and removable storage. “Sorry, you can’t choose Downloads/, because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” doesn’t strike me as something that will make users very happy.

I am all for improved user control over privacy and security concerns, but the boundaries between what is and is not allowed need to make sense to users and, secondarily, to developers.

https://commonsware.com/blog/2020/02/21/random-musings-r-dp1.html

submitted by /u/anemomylos
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