When SAB downloads files from the cloud, where are they stored on Android phones?
I can’t find them anywhere.
It would be very helpful in rural (bad internet) places to have ONE person go to town to download the chapters, and then come back and share them with friends, phone to phone.
Where Android devices are allowed to write downloaded files has changed from version to version of Android. This makes file handling in the SAB apps quite complicated.
Android 10 and 11 use scoped storage, meaning that the app uses an area of storage which is app-specific and not accessible outside the app. This is where audio files are downloaded at the moment.
The use case you describe is certainly relevant, and we will need to think some more about how to make this possible, given the storage access restrictions in the latest versions of Android.
Thank you! I thought I was going crazy, because Android 9 worked like a sensible OS where the USER can actually control where files go. Apparently Google has deemed us users too immature to handle such power and treats us like iOS users now. Sigh. (I imagine this is for “safety, security, copyright protection” etc. But if the user grants permission and the app is okay with using regular storage area, why should Google care?
Looking forward to how this is solved. Apparently Word and Excel etc are allowed to access local internal and external user memory, and so are File Managers. So it can be done, right?
David, are you familiar with the MicroPi? SAB integration has been designed into the MicroPi for a use case similar to what you’re describing. It isn’t strictly the peer-to-peer sharing that you’re looking for, but somebody with a good internet connection can clone the directory for a given language on ScriptureEarth.org onto the MicroPi and then take the device to a rural location to share those files without internet (including serving audio files to SAB apps). Technical details are available on the MicroPi site.
Thanks for that. I’m not sure I followed it all, but basically if we can save audio/video files to the folder we specify (whether internal memory or extended memory on a microSD card), then local users can simply use the ShareIt app to send whole folders from one phone to another without the need of the internet. This saves a huge amount of hassle. And it gets the needed support materials to the end-user easily and reliably. (I’m speaking for the Android world here, because where we work it is basically 99.9% Android.)
So, I am still puzzled by the stated requirement that apps must use “scoped storage” (in Android 10 and 11) , since many apps on our Android 10 phones, including Word, Excel, and File Manager are able to interact with files on the device in the locations where the user has put them (not in some special hidden location). And downloaded files are normally downloaded into the “Download” folder, which is also viewable and usable by other apps. (So, yes, I am ignorant of the restrictions, hence my question as to why some apps can and others can’t.) I know that the first time we run our SAB apps, and try to play audio, it asks for permission to access the stored files, which we give it. (And if the audio files are already on the device, it finds them and plays them. So even SAB apps have some interaction with “normal” files and folders.)
Hi all,
It would be great to have some more info about this. I was under the impression that the files were accessible as mp3s on the device in a standard folder. That way someone could copy chapter mp3s directly to that folder on the phone, negating the need to download them. SAB book collections specify the name of the audio download folder. Is that used for anything else?
It looks like Scoped Storage was a fairly new change from Google, but there are still ways to write to “visible” storage. This will fixed in an upcoming version of SAB.