In my application, I need to store lots of images in the device storage. Such files tend to fulfill the device storage, and I want to allow users to be able to choose external SD card as the destination folder.
I read everywhere that Android doesn't allow users to write to external SD card, by SD card I mean the external and mountable SD card and not the external storage, but file manager applications manage to write to External SD on all Android versions.
What is the better way to grant read/write access to external SD card on different API levels (Pre-KitKat, KitKat, Lollipop+)?
Update 1
I tried Method 1 from Doomknight's answer, with no avail: As you can see I'm checking for permissions at runtime before attempting to write on SD:
HashSet<String> extDirs = getStorageDirectories();
for(String dir: extDirs) {
Log.e("SD",dir);
File f = new File(new File(dir),"TEST.TXT");
try {
if(ActivityCompat.checkSelfPermission(this,Manifest.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE)==PackageManager.PERMISSION_GRANTED) {
f.createNewFile();
}
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
But I get an access error, tried on two different devices: HTC10 and Shield K1.
10-22 14:52:57.329 30280-30280/? E/SD: /mnt/media_rw/F38E-14F8
10-22 14:52:57.329 30280-30280/? W/System.err: java.io.IOException: open failed: EACCES (Permission denied)
10-22 14:52:57.329 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at java.io.File.createNewFile(File.java:939)
10-22 14:52:57.329 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at com.myapp.activities.TestActivity.onResume(TestActivity.java:167)
10-22 14:52:57.329 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnResume(Instrumentation.java:1326)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at android.app.Activity.performResume(Activity.java:6338)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread.performResumeActivity(ActivityThread.java:3336)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread.handleResumeActivity(ActivityThread.java:3384)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2574)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread.access$900(ActivityThread.java:150)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1399)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:102)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:168)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5885)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:819)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:709)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: Caused by: android.system.ErrnoException: open failed: EACCES (Permission denied)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at libcore.io.Posix.open(Native Method)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at libcore.io.BlockGuardOs.open(BlockGuardOs.java:186)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: at java.io.File.createNewFile(File.java:932)
10-22 14:52:57.330 30280-30280/? W/System.err: ... 14 more