Scooped Storage - confusing

OpenSource-Ghost

AFAIK, Scoped Storage was introduced in Android 10 and restricted each application to its own folder in "Android/data" directory for applications targeting Android 11 or newer.

It doesn't look like Target SDK number forces applications to have Scoped Storage options available in GrapheneOS. It is quite confusing...

How is self-assigned Scoped Storage container differ in GrapheneOS from default one apps create in "Android/data" directory?

Should self-assigned Scoped Storage directories be created outside of shared library folders (Download, Music, Movies, Pictures) for best privacy and security?

GrapheneOS

OpenSource-Ghost There's nothing in Android called Storage Scopes and there's no user-facing feature in Android called Scoped Storage. The user-facing impact was the removal of the Files and Media permission which instead turned into the Media permission which was itself replaced with permissions for access specific kinds of media. A special access permission for file management was added which provides nearly the same access as the previous storage permission. Not nearly as much changed as you seem to believe. Storage Access Framework (system file picker) has existed since Android 4.4 and has been able to be used to select multiple files from the beginning along with directories since 5.0. It was very underused and is now being used more than before since apps were forced to use it if they need to access more than indexed media files and aren't granted the file management special access permission. Play Store polices use of the file management permission but not very strictly and outside the Play Store apps can use it for anything.

Please read https://grapheneos.org/usage#storage-access which explains how Android's shared storage/media access works for apps and then read the section explaining our Storage Scopes feature. Our Storage Scopes feature is an alternative to the storage and media permissions. It isn't available in Android.

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https://grapheneos.org/features#storage-scopes

https://grapheneos.org/usage#storage-access

OpenSource-Ghost

Isn't all of Internal Shared Storage (Download, Documents, Music, Movies, Pictures) shared between all apps?

There is no way to prevent Signal, for example, from accessing Download directory to select and send files, even though Signal did not create that directory.

The only time Scoped Storage helps limit storage access is when it comes to media files ("Music and Audio" and/or "Photos and Video").

Why is there a distinction? File type recognition is based on file extension, which can be easily manipulated.

raccoondad

OpenSource-Ghost

"There is no way to prevent Signal, for example, from accessing Download directory to select and send files, even though Signal did not create that directory."

You can with storage scopes. Storage scopes prevents apps from accessing files it has not created or been given access to via the android settings.

"It doesn't look like Target SDK number forces applications to have Scoped Storage options available in GrapheneOS.", it doesn't need to. The application just sees the files it can access and doesn't see files it can't access. Its as if the file doesn't exist to the application. Storage scope options is done in the android settings, not the application.

I may be misunderstanding what you are asking, but if I am not hope that clears it up for you.