Scoped storage woes Android 11

[jason6g]

So I ‘upgraded’ my pixel 4xl to android 11 a few days ago, root works well and it seems like just another day, except I’ve come to find that I don’t care for scoped storage – at least how I’m trying to use it. All the other changes are just meh to me so I'm definitely not married to 11.

Previously, I could play a movie file (I prefer es file explorer) and mxplayer would automatically open up a similarly named subtitle file and all was well. When the video file reached it’s end, the next video & it's subtitles would start playing and it was wonderful!

Currently on android 11, I cannot even open subtitles! Any player I try seems to not have a clue as to what exists on my storage – which prompted a google search and I was informed of scoped storage being snuck in – awesome =(

So I came across a page that mentioned enabling on a per app basis legacy storage

adb shell cmd appops set your-package-name android:legacy_storage allow

– except I don’t know what the package name is. No worries, we’ll just enable root on the file explorer and …. Oh well that doesn’t work anymore either =(

So, short of rolling back to android 10 and dealing with all that entails (wiping and all) I was hoping someone smarter than myself could offer some insight in not allowing google to break/ruin one of the leading reasons i’ve chosen to use their product.

 

[jljtgr]

My favorites so far are...
That my filemanager app takes 10-100x as long to calculate folder sizes compared to just August's update.
And that it seems like scoped storage when not giving full access properly will allow visibility to folders, but not files... so my file syncing app saw all of my folders empty and told my other devices to delete everything and leave empty folders. Google is banning PlayStore apps from asking the user for full access until January 2021. (the permission toggle is greyed out)

 

[rdragoni]

Just discovered the limits of scoped storage as well.
Actually, I have a Pixel 3A, then I'm a "dirty foreigner" here...

Anyway, a little anecdote about how I discovered that I should have listened to my inner voice, "don't change a winning team".

I was happy and rock-solid with an old, stable version of A10, still March 2020 update.
Rooted with Magisk, system-less hosts, pixel launcher editor and few other Magisk modules, Ad-away root.
Everything was working as a charm, including all my favourites "vintage" apps: OI notepad, ES file explorer 4022 system-less and triggered apk, Dolphin browser (old and "fine tuned" apk) used as a text viewer as well... it was the only text-viewer with "find in page" capability to search for a given word/string within a text.

Since Sept 2020, after months of silence (no update notifications since March 2020) I have been prompted daily, by android system , to update to A11. I resisted a few weeks, let's say a month... aware of the gold rule "don't change a winning team".

Few days ago, reassured by the successful feedback from several Magisk users, I decided to give it a try.
What a mess... The first attempt completely messed up my loved and stable configuration.
I had to flash-all (with "-w" removed) several times just to have a bootable phone. Of course, root was gone.
Then, I have been trying for days every Master/Beta/Canary versions, without success.

The only working solution was to flash back the stock boot image, forgetting root and customization capabilities (mainly pixel launcher).

Yesterday, not sure why, I was lucky enough to have a rooted bootable config.
For the record: MagiskManager 8.02 master branch, Magisk 21 beta branch. Screen lock removed, SIM lock removed.
I don't know if the screen/sim lock has an impact, but it worked for me after 2/3 consecutive "flash boot" of magisk_patched.

I was happy like a baby on Xmas eve, and spent again a few hours to set my phone to my preferred config.
I just had to find a new "best choice" file manager (ES doesn't work with the new root/file system policies).
Everything seemed to work fine, until today...

I was just trying to open a TXT file (c'mon, the basics!) from the file explorer, choosing "Dolphin" or "Oi notepad" as the viewer.
Both apps didn't handle the request. OI notepad by simply closing, Dolphin by showing a "not available page".
I have tried different file managers, re-enabled Files "by google" (disabled by default in my phones, as well as google app), gave any possible permissions to the apps. No way to get the file opened.

Then, by googling, I discovered this beautiful new feature of "Scoped storage"... and I think I found the culprit.

Well, that's were I am now, with limited access to MY file system.
What the f##k! Why did I struggle to be a "su" user?!
No control on file system policies, my "vintage" apps completely useless, and no open-source, ad-free, not-bloated app available.

I'm really thinking about going back to A10 for a while... and forever respect te rule "don't change a winning team".

Sorry for the long outburst :-/ just wanted to share with you my hassle.
I think I will copy and paste this to the proper section, Pixel 3a.

Never give up! We'll not allow Google to become the new Apple

Cheers,
Riccardo

 

[Lughnasadh]

Just discovered the limits of scoped storage as well.
Actually, I have a Pixel 3A, then I'm a "dirty foreigner" here...

Anyway, a little anecdote about how I discovered that I should have listened to my inner voice, "don't change a winning team".

I was happy and rock-solid with an old, stable version of A10, still March 2020 update.
Rooted with Magisk, system-less hosts, pixel launcher editor and few other Magisk modules, Ad-away root.
Everything was working as a charm, including all my favourites "vintage" apps: OI notepad, ES file explorer 4022 system-less and triggered apk, Dolphin browser (old and "fine tuned" apk) used as a text viewer as well... it was the only text-viewer with "find in page" capability to search for a given word/string within a text.

Since Sept 2020, after months of silence (no update notifications since March 2020) I have been prompted daily, by android system , to update to A11. I resisted a few weeks, let's say a month... aware of the gold rule "don't change a winning team".

Few days ago, reassured by the successful feedback from several Magisk users, I decided to give it a try.
What a mess... The first attempt completely messed up my loved and stable configuration.
I had to flash-all (with "-w" removed) several times just to have a bootable phone. Of course, root was gone.
Then, I have been trying for days every Master/Beta/Canary versions, without success.

The only working solution was to flash back the stock boot image, forgetting root and customization capabilities (mainly pixel launcher).

Yesterday, not sure why, I was lucky enough to have a rooted bootable config.
For the record: MagiskManager 8.02 master branch, Magisk 21 beta branch. Screen lock removed, SIM lock removed.
I don't know if the screen/sim lock has an impact, but it worked for me after 2/3 consecutive "flash boot" of magisk_patched.

I was happy like a baby on Xmas eve, and spent again a few hours to set my phone to my preferred config.
I just had to find a new "best choice" file manager (ES doesn't work with the new root/file system policies).
Everything seemed to work fine, until today...

I was just trying to open a TXT file (c'mon, the basics!) from the file explorer, choosing "Dolphin" or "Oi notepad" as the viewer.
Both apps didn't handle the request. OI notepad by simply closing, Dolphin by showing a "not available page".
I have tried different file managers, re-enabled Files "by google" (disabled by default in my phones, as well as google app), gave any possible permissions to the apps. No way to get the file opened.

Then, by googling, I discovered this beautiful new feature of "Scoped storage"... and I think I found the culprit.

Well, that's were I am now, with limited access to MY file system.
What the f##k! Why did I struggle to be a "su" user?!
No control on file system policies, my "vintage" apps completely useless, and no open-source, ad-free, not-bloated app available.

I'm really thinking about going back to A10 for a while... and forever respect te rule "don't change a winning team".

Sorry for the long outburst :-/ just wanted to share with you my hassle.
I think I will copy and paste this to the proper section, Pixel 3a.

Never give up! We'll not allow Google to become the new Apple

Cheers,
Riccardo

Have you tried MiXplorer? Works fine for me opening up text files in the built-in text editor, albeit on a Pixel 4 XL.

If you care about privacy, you probably don't want to use ES File Explorer anyway.

 

[jljtgr]

I'll second MiXplorer. You can get a free version on XDA and there's a paid version on the Play Store if you want to support them. I'm not really sure what you mean by "find in page", though... isn't that just a normal find function? Anyways, MiXplorer comes with internal image/text/video/sound viewers, so anything you can select, it can view. You can even tell it to treat an unknown extension as a certain type and it will push that to itself or an app of your choosing.