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Yesterday I upgraded my Samsung Galaxy S4 to Android 4.4 KitKat and had the bad surprise that it cannot write to my SD card anymore... I know this problem is widely documented everywhere, but has any workaround been found for it yet? (Other than removing the card physically from the phone and opening it on my PC) Also, because of the KNOX flag I can't downgrade to 4.3...

(PS: Rooted or not, it makes no difference)

Guillaume
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  • Is it the offical release or a custom ROM? – RossC Feb 26 '14 at 11:45
  • @RossC, its a rule change in Kitkat regardless of ROM. OP: Only possible workaround is this, if you need write access, you need to provide the permission, or use the Storage Access Framework which comes with KitKat will do this. – t0mm13b Feb 26 '14 at 11:48
  • RossC: Mine is the official I9505XXUFNB8 (Germany), but @t0mm13b is correct, it happens regardless of the ROM, it's a KitKat "feature". Also, I'm looking at a workaround for existing applications, not one I'd write myself... – Guillaume Feb 26 '14 at 11:54
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    @t0mm13b ah, that's not ideal. I knew that change was there alright, but I was under the (obviously wrong) impression that Samsung would patch this to work on their own device with official ROM as they still 'support' EXT-SD cards. On a rooted device SOME have had success with folder mount, but others have bricked their device. Try XDA and see what's there, it is being worked on but I've not see a definitive answer. – RossC Feb 26 '14 at 11:57
  • @t0mm13b: Is there a way, as a user (rooted), to provide additional permissions to applications that don't request them? I'm thinking FolderMount, music players, photo editors, etc. – Guillaume Feb 26 '14 at 11:57
  • Almost bricked my device too with FolderMount... It asked me to patch the filesystem, I let it do it, then nothing worked in the phone anymore (both SD cards disappeared...) - I reinstalled the official KitKat and re-rooted, everything's fine again – Guillaume Feb 26 '14 at 11:59
  • My KitKat ROM on the S4 can wite and read the SD card. I can't move apps (that's gone) but pictures / media are fine. It is a customised Google Edition ROM (I'm free of touchwiz thankfully). Ah it's patched, and samsung are going to follow Google's guidelines on SD cards sadly: http://www.phonearena.com/news/Android-4.4-update-for-Samsung-Galaxy-S4-Note-3-likely-to-cause-microSD-problems_id52995 – RossC Feb 26 '14 at 12:01
  • Have you complained to the authors of whatever app(s) you're having trouble with? It's up to them to set their permissions correctly. – Dan Hulme Feb 26 '14 at 12:31
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    In short, the real workaround, is to change one line in the manifest within the kitkat source and recompile the rom and flash it. Google are clear on moving away from SDCards, flash memory capacity are increasing, and cheap to embed on device board, and furthermore, using cloud services for storage. Its a major inconvenience, perhaps someone with Xposed framework might circumvent it.... pita.. – t0mm13b Feb 26 '14 at 12:36
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    @DanHulme complaining to author of app is not the solution. Its a drastic change by Google... – t0mm13b Feb 26 '14 at 12:43
  • @t0mm13b It was announced years in advance and app authors could add the permission before it was required. It's not like the MediaScanner change, which was presented as a fait accompli. This isn't the appropriate place to discuss Google's compatibility policy, anyway. – Dan Hulme Feb 26 '14 at 12:51
  • Source for the "announcement years in advance" of changes in Kitkat in relation to the SDCard? – t0mm13b Feb 26 '14 at 12:52
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    The permission's existed since API 16, and there's been a big warning in the official training for as long as I can remember. – Dan Hulme Feb 26 '14 at 12:58
  • I disagree with you @DanHulme, those documents, api 16 was there about a year ago, "not announced years in advance" and furthermore, the docs were just recently updated to reflect API 19. – t0mm13b Feb 26 '14 at 13:05
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    It's still a dumbass move. Why should we be forced to store all our downloads on internal memory? The whole point (more or less) of having an SD slot is so we can dump a bunch of media onto a card and swap one collection for another. I suppose Google wants us all to use "cloud memory" which is worthless when off the network. – Carl Witthoft Feb 26 '14 at 15:39
  • I see their reasoning though, and it's not necessarily for a "bad" (as in: they want us to move to cloud) reason. Currently all the apps that have media access have access to the whole SD card, so potentially other apps' data. That's a security concern. Just need to make sure I don't save any sensitive stuff on the SD card. – Guillaume Feb 26 '14 at 15:54

3 Answers3

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Found an answer to my own question! Might as well share how I did it (DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK, it worked fine for me). Needs root obviously.

  1. Using a root-enabled file manager, navigate to /system/etc/permissions
  2. Edit platform.xml and find the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission.
  3. Add an additional group definition for this permission...<group gid="media_rw" />
  4. Save the changes to the file.
  5. Restart.

Credits go to mateenf from the XDA-developers forum

t0mm13b
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Guillaume
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I found a way better solution! With uTorrent I was not able to write to

"/storage/extSdCard/"

But I am able to write to:

"/storage/extSdCard/Android/Data/com.utorrent.client"

So look for a folder on the SD card that your app has access to given by Android.

nl-x
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I used this workaround to edit tags from my external SD card on my rooted LG G3 (LG-D851). Audio player is PowerAmp.

  1. Download and install Xposed installer from the Google Playstore: Instructions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj_fgrpgDRU (GadgetHacks)
  2. In Xposed Installer click on "Download." (you may have to hit refresh symbol to load modules).
  3. Click on and download "KitKat SD Card Full Access" from the repository. Make sure you have the download from Unknown Sources box checked (settings >security >unknown sources).
  4. Once the module has been downloaded and installed, reboot your phone and tag away to your heart's content.
Heru Ammen
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