They bullied Syncthing the same way. Fortunately, Syncthing-fork is still developed and available on F-droid.
I understand a well-curated app store (which Play Store is not) placing some limits on apps getting all files access. In a modern security model, that’s not a permission most apps should have, however synchronization and file management apps obviously should have it.
Was going to comment the same, this issue has existed for some time for other apps. LibreTorrent ran into the same issue and now the F-Droid version is their full-featured app while the Google Play version is restricted due to Google.
Interesting that Nextcloud managed to last this long on Google Play without running into the same limitations (until now that is).
How do you think torrents work? They basically just download a file, but from multiple people instead of a single server. It needs access to the file system so it can save the files.
Edit: my bad, misunderstood. I thought the comment above was asking why it needed file access in general, not all file access.
It needs access to the file system. But why would it need access to the whole thing? Just download to its own storage, no? Then use something else to copy elsewhere.
Unless this is to support saving to any folder, or built in smb support or something.
They bullied Syncthing the same way. Fortunately, Syncthing-fork is still developed and available on F-droid.
I understand a well-curated app store (which Play Store is not) placing some limits on apps getting all files access. In a modern security model, that’s not a permission most apps should have, however synchronization and file management apps obviously should have it.
And if you grant access to your own apps, but deny them to your competitors, that is totally a monopoly abuse
And it should be met with steadily increasing fines until they stop it or go bankrupt. Both is fine with me.
Was going to comment the same, this issue has existed for some time for other apps. LibreTorrent ran into the same issue and now the F-Droid version is their full-featured app while the Google Play version is restricted due to Google.
Interesting that Nextcloud managed to last this long on Google Play without running into the same limitations (until now that is).
Wait, why would libretorrent require all files access?
How do you think torrents work? They basically just download a file, but from multiple people instead of a single server. It needs access to the file system so it can save the files.
Edit: my bad, misunderstood. I thought the comment above was asking why it needed file access in general, not all file access.
It needs access to the file system. But why would it need access to the whole thing? Just download to its own storage, no? Then use something else to copy elsewhere.
Unless this is to support saving to any folder, or built in smb support or something.
Thanks for clarifying, I thought the comment above was asking why it needed file access in the first place, not all file access.
Wholesome thread. Acknowledged ones mistake, very rare on Reddit