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Wait, I seem to remember this discussion from years ago and thought it was resolved. Back then, Google wanted to drop the "access all files" permission from Android's permission system entirely but IIRC Syncthing & file manager devs then convinced them to keep it. But now Google comes back at them with a Google Play policy that prevents them from using that permission in practice?

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You have to ask permission via a form from Google and your app must closely fit a white list of use cases (file manager, etc.) Obviously there's a high chance they just say "nah". Definitely sucks.

It probably doesn't help that Syncthing is a direct competitor to Google Drive.

Yeah, but the legitimate use-case for that permission is VERY narrow - as in, if there's ANY way to implement your use-case using SAF, you MUST use SAF.

And SyncThing can be implemented using SAF - it's "just" a lot of work and that's usually not enough for Play Store to grant exception.

I see, thanks so much for elaborating!

> it's "just" a lot of work

What about I/O performance? I would expect SAF to come with some overhead that might not make it a good solution for a file syncing application.

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