social.noyu.me

please stop trying to kill the file system. please. please for the love of all that is good in the world

by the way, the solution to the same problem on iOS is just:

    "UIFileSharingEnabled": true,

it's existed for thirteen years, it doesn't require any code, and it supports normal fucking POSIX filesystem APIs

this is made all the more confusing by the fact newer Android versions still use the “file” and “file manager” metaphor in user-facing text, and there is a long list of exceptions that make it very hard to make general statements. many users will not have noticed the change.

in Android 11, Google fundamentally changed what a file is and what a file manager does, without communicating this to users. we as app developers are left to pick up the pieces, desperately trying to explain this incomprehensible system to users who think we're gaslighting them.

btw while Google were reinventing the filesystem they created a new URI scheme for “content” that is apparently unusable for the most important application of URIs, namely hyperlinks. opening “content://org.touchhle.android.provider/” brings up… the Messages app??? what the fuck

ok never mind, it's just “content://org.touchhle.android.provider/root/root”. allegedly this only works on some devices but look, that's almost a normal URI. do not ask me why it opens Messages if i get the path wrong

btw adb shell am to-uri and adb shell am start-activity are extremely useful.

also in case you didn't believe me about the file manager not being a file manager: its true name is com.android.documentsui

@hikari How does the design principle of treating everything as a file mutate into this?

Does it have some connection with Android's weird hostility to microSDs?

@hikari I do like how elegant this stuff is on iOS

@saagar I have of course seen their latest piece of comedy

@hikari@social.noyu.me

But users can do stuff to a file system that compromises their control, revenue streams, Spyware, or advertising. Why would Google spend all that money to make Android if you could do stuff that you wanted with it?

@hikari filesystems are good, actually (granted specific implementations and APIs may or may be better or worse, but)

@hikari very interesting how the OS that barely shows users that files even exist has better filesystem apis than the OS that lets you browse system directories without root access

@hikari IT managers complain to companies about having to support tech-illiterate people who lose their precious family photos for the past 30 years because they nested them 30 folders deep into the bowels of C:\Windows, so this is what we get

@hikari technically you still can drop stuff into android/data with a file manager if you:
a) use the DocumentsUI and split screen and just drag and drop stuff from one window of DocumentsUI that is in, say, Downloads, to another, pointing into the TouchHLE dir
b) have root and go to /data/media/0/Android/data instead - that, for some reason, does not count as explicitly prohibited territory and will not be sandboxed into making your app think its the only thing installed on the device

@hikari@social.noyu.me What in the absolute fuck. This seems like a move Apple would make.

@hikari oh that impl is way simpler than the aosp code i stole for the same purpose. wasnt a kotlin project though so

@hikari Well, I guess Android has failed to die a hero, and lived long enough to become the villain in its own story. ​