Scoped Storage in Android 10- All You Need to Know

Every Android version has something for developers and users alike. The Android 10 version has many user-friendly features and performance enhancements. For example, Android has introduced a new storage system in Android 10 known as Scoped Storage. But before diving deep into this new storage system and discussing its role in Android app development, let’s go through the aspects of a current Shared Storage system.

• Brief on Shared Storage:

Before the advent of Scoped Storage, the shared storage had the following characteristics for Android phone users-

• All apps have their private Directory in Internal Storage i.e android/data/your package name, which is not visible to other apps.
• Most of the apps require broad storage permission to perform simple functions. For example, downloading images or as image picker, etc. Now, at the time of uninstalling apps, most of the app-related files don’t get deleted. This results in the issue of insufficient storage.
Android 10 has brought a redesigned storage system to overcome these issues. We know it as Scoped Storage.

• What is Scoped Storage?

• It’s a concept of storing files, images, etc separately called Collections which restricts the conventional access of the whole storage.
• Better Attribution: This means which app created which file is known by the system. It is useful when the App is uninstalled, so all the data related to the app is also uninstalled.
• Protecting App Data: Internal app directories and external app directories are private.
Protect user data: Downloaded image not to be used by another app.

Original Source: Android 10