Behavioural change in scoped storage on Android 10

Question

I started working on the SDK migration to 29.

The main issue that I had with this was that the Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() was deprecated and scoped storage.

I had it all replaced with Context# getExternalFilesDir(null). It started working on Pixel 3a with Android 11 beta.

But when I tested it on Samsung s9+ with Android 10. It started giving me this error:

W/Glide: Load failed for /storage/emulated/0/Pictures/UHD Wallpapers/_uhdarchitecture208.jpg with size [96x96]
    class com.bumptech.glide.load.engine.GlideException: Failed to load resource
    There were 3 causes:
    java.io.FileNotFoundException(/storage/emulated/0/Pictures/UHD Wallpapers/_uhdarchitecture208.jpg: open failed: EACCES (Permission denied))
    java.io.FileNotFoundException(/storage/emulated/0/Pictures/UHD Wallpapers/_uhdarchitecture208.jpg: open failed: EACCES (Permission denied))
    java.io.FileNotFoundException(open failed: EACCES (Permission denied))
     call GlideException#logRootCauses(String) for more detail
      Cause (1 of 3): class com.bumptech.glide.load.engine.GlideException: Fetching data failed, class java.nio.ByteBuffer, LOCAL
    There was 1 cause:
    java.io.FileNotFoundException(/storage/emulated/0/Pictures/UHD Wallpapers/_uhdarchitecture208.jpg: open failed: EACCES (Permission denied))
     call GlideException#logRootCauses(String) for more detail
        Cause (1 of 1): class java.io.FileNotFoundException: /storage/emulated/0/Pictures/UHD Wallpapers/_uhdarchitecture208.jpg: open failed: EACCES (Permission denied)
      Cause (2 of 3): class com.bumptech.glide.load.engine.GlideException: Fetching data failed, class java.io.InputStream, LOCAL
    There was 1 cause:
    java.io.FileNotFoundException(/storage/emulated/0/Pictures/UHD Wallpapers/_uhdarchitecture208.jpg: open failed: EACCES (Permission denied))
     call GlideException#logRootCauses(String) for more detail
        Cause (1 of 1): class java.io.FileNotFoundException: /storage/emulated/0/Pictures/UHD Wallpapers/_uhdarchitecture208.jpg: open failed: EACCES (Permission denied)
      Cause (3 of 3): class com.bumptech.glide.load.engine.GlideException: Fetching data failed, class android.os.ParcelFileDescriptor, LOCAL
    There was 1 cause:
    java.io.FileNotFoundException(open failed: EACCES (Permission denied))
     call GlideException#logRootCauses(String) for more detail
        Cause (1 of 1): class java.io.FileNotFoundException: open failed: EACCES (Permission denied)

I was trying to load an image with the help of Glide.

I tested it on other devices as well. It's NOT working only on Android 10 devices. It's working on devices with Android 9 and below and Android 11 Beta.

Then, I placed the android:requestLegacyExternalStorage = "true" in my manifest and it started working on Android 10 as well.

Now my questions are:

If it is related to Scoped storage than why is it working on Android 11 and not Android 10?
Do we only need the legacy flag for Android 10 to make this work?

Behavioural change in scoped storage on Android 10

0 Answers