Android Question Missing Storage Permission - Permission Request Dialog Does Not Display

[biometrics]

The storage permission is missing from the app permissions.

I ask for permission to access storage in the usual way (see code below) and it works on all phones. We now have a case with a Samsung A71/Android 13 that the request for storage permission dialog doesn't display. We request camera permission after storage permission and that dialog does display.

In the app permission there is no storage option, only camera.

Sub Process_Globals
    Private libRuntimePermissions As RuntimePermissions
End Sub

Sub Activity_Create(FirstTime As Boolean)
        libRuntimePermissions.CheckAndRequest(libRuntimePermissions.PERMISSION_WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE)
        Wait For Activity_PermissionResult (Permission As String, bResult As Boolean)

End Sub

Manifest targetSdkVersion="33".

Any idea what is going on and how to fix this? The app won't run without storage permission.

Details of the phone:

 

[OliverA]

According to Google's documentation, that WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission has no effect as of targetSdkVersion 30
Link:

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission#WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

 

[DonManfred]

Also check carefullly this thread:

android.jar / targetSdkVersion / minSdkVersion

There are several versioned components that affect the compilation process and the runtime behavior of our apps. The purpose of this tutorial is to explain the differences between them and help you choose which version to use. Each Android version is mapped to an api level. You can see this...

www.b4x.com

There are more things you need to adapt maybe

 

[biometrics]

In 2021 I had to stop using a directory under root and switch to using a directory under GetSafeDirDefaultExternal. It's been working fine so far, and it's still working fine for most of my users. Yet with this new user I can't access files. So I don't understand what has changed and what I need to do.

  sPath = libRuntimePermissions.GetSafeDirDefaultExternal("")

 

[biometrics]

According to Google's documentation, that WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission has no effect as of targetSdkVersion 30
Link:

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission#WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

Ok I guess that explains why the dialog doesn't display on an Android 13 phone but it does show on my Android 10 phone.

 

[biometrics]

This is what the user experiences when closing my app's settings page where I try to save the settings to Settings.txt.

 

[OliverA]

As of API 30, if you want to read / write any file type from/to external storage, you're supposed to let the user choose first the location of the file. With API 33, some specific permissions were added to allow programmatic access to media files, but nothing else.
Link:

Behavior changes: Apps targeting Android 13 or higher | Android Developers

Learn about changes in Android 13 that will affect apps when they target Android 13 or higher.

developer.android.com

 

[biometrics]

As of API 30, if you want to read / write any file type from/to external storage, you're supposed to let the user choose first the location of the file. With API 33, some specific permissions were added to allow programmatic access to media files, but nothing else.
Link:

Behavior changes: Apps targeting Android 13 or higher | Android Developers

Learn about changes in Android 13 that will affect apps when they target Android 13 or higher.

developer.android.com

I read that but that is to access other apps' files. I am only accessing my own files in a directory I got from GetSafeDirDefaultExternal.

 

[DonManfred]

I am only accessing my own files in a directory I got from GetSafeDirDefaultExternal.

Flow chart to help choose folder

This flow chart will help you choose the folder in all kinds of different cases: There were reasons to use other folders in the past. Those reasons are no longer relevant, mainly due to new restrictions in Android. Other options to access local and remote files...

www.b4x.com

 

[OliverA]

Looks like GetSafeDirDefaultExternal should still work. Technically the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE request is not even needed with this method as of KitKat. I did see a code example where the user first checked if the underlying file location is read-only. Are you sure that phone's external storage is writeable?

Link:

B4A/Libs_RuntimePermissions/src/anywheresoftware/b4a/objects/RuntimePermissions.java at 2aeca9711cff3d32587a927935f6a34cc6655672 · AnywhereSoftware/B4A

B4A core libraries. Contribute to AnywhereSoftware/B4A development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/core/content/ContextCompat#getExternalFilesDirs(android.content.Context,java.lang.String)

Why are some ContextCompat.getExternalFilesDirs not accessible?

ContextCompat.getExternalFilesDirs(context, null) says: Returns absolute paths to application-specific directories on all external storage devices where the application can place persistent file...

stackoverflow.com

Note: The stackoverflow code does check first if the returned file object 1) exits, 2) can be read, and 3) can be written.

 

[biometrics]

Ok so seems the user didn't explain the problem properly, I was under the impression that the issue is that they don't have storage permission and the app won't run because of it.

But it was more a case of my permission check being in a loop, but the Android dialog wasn't showing and when there wasn't permission I displayed a MsgBox that they need to allow permission, eventually timing out, displaying a MsgBox that I am sending them to the app permissions to manually enable it, and then sending them to the app permissions page.

I'm now only doing this when it's SDK < 30. It's working with one user so far, so hopefully it sorts of the few others that are now also having this issue.

Will "close" this thread once I get final feedback.

 

[biometrics]

Ok, so looks like they are all running again. So we can "close" this thread so to speak. Thanks @OliverA & @DonManfred.

 

[biometrics]

In retrospect if

        libRuntimePermissions.CheckAndRequest(libRuntimePermissions.PERMISSION_WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE)
        Wait For Activity_PermissionResult (Permission As String, bResult As Boolean)

just returned True on SDK 30+ then this would have worked fine. But now there is no dialog and it returns False.

 

[OliverA]

just returned True on SDK 30+ then this would have worked fine. But now there is no dialog and it returns False.

Yeah, one has to be careful with that. I'm pretty sure there are some permissions that if the user denies them (on the initial showing of the permission dialog), subsequent permission requests by the app will NOT show a dialog box, but just return false. The user has to explicitly grant requests for that app then in setting or uninstall/re-install the app. (the location request permission might work that way - not 100% sure).