A couple updates ago I learned this wasn’t possible, and had to reconfigure the config and move files into places I didn’t want them. Has anything changed since? I would really like to keep everything on SD.
Nope, and it’s not going to get that ability unless/until Google et al figure out a better way of dealing with security.
I don’t understand why that’s still an issue, any app can access external storage as long as permission is granted by the user first. Some apps will automatically walk you through all that upon initial setup.
For instance, and I’ve used this example before, FolderSync just has the user point to the root folder of the SD via file explorer, that’s literally all there is to it. I don’t know how that’s considered granting permission exactly, but they have figured it out because the app works. I can actually sync stuff back and forth between internal and external.
That’s all through the JNI stuff, which we don’t use. To my knowledge, there’s no way to do it through a wholly NDK application without introducing the Java side.
Sorry i just updated my post above as you replied, please respond if you are able. I don’t know anything about JNI or NDK, didn’t even know that was a thing.
Yes, most apps you interact with in Android are written in Java or use the Java Native Interface to let a native C/++ application talk to a Java menu. We used to have a Java menu in the Android port but it was tedious to maintain, frequently broke and led to numerous complaints about there being 2 different menus (that is, the normal in-game menu and the weird Java menu) and they didn’t always have the same options and changing something in one place wasn’t always reflected in the other, etc. So, we killed off the Java menu right around the same time Google announced* the permissions changes.
*As I recall, it was less an announcement and more a thing devs discovered once users upgraded to Jelly Bean and started complaining that they couldn’t interact with their external storage anymore.
Hmmm, actually the permission for 6.0 y newer seems attainable. But mantaining all this stupid fluctuating schemes by Google is annoying.
Pre kitkat any app could write to the SD card After kitkat you could only write to a private app folder on the SD card (sdcard/data/com.retroarch/files) On lollipop briefly you could write again but not all the manufacturers followed On 6.0 they added a new runtime permissions scheme and adoptable storage (which is the best that could happen)
Long story short, it’s complicated, I have zero issues on my setup even in 5.1 but I am rooted and used sdfix.
I keep all my saves, states, ROMs, ect. on my external with my shield portable. Just root it and the problem goes away.