SDRemount
remounts the SD Card to allow write access
Version: 1.2.0
Added: 07-01-2021
Updated: 07-01-2021
Added: 07-01-2021
Updated: 07-01-2021
This app tries to restore legacy SD Card write access, which has been removed in android 4.4 and newer.
**DISCLAIMER**
This is currently a very small and spontaneous project released in the hopes of being useful. While i take my best care to design this application to be stable and never harmful, i cannot guarantee any kind of safety. Use of this application happens on your own risk and discretion, especially since i can only test the application on the few devices that i own. If in major doubt, you might want to test the functionality of the app on your device with an unimportant SD Card first to eliminate any possiblity of data loss.
That being said, there's currently nothing destructive going on and misbehavior should entirely be limited to failure of enabling write access. Anything this app might currently do wrong if running on a wrong device should entirely be revertable by uninstalling it and remounting your SD Card.
**What is this**
With android 4.4, Google decided that it would be time for a new and fancy way to access your internal storage and introduced the Storage Access Framework (SAF). You might have had some contact with it over time.
Sadly, with this new feature Google also decided to remove SD Card write access like it used to exist, forcing every app to go through SAF if they want to write something to the SD Card. This required each developer to update their apps. Until this day, some apps still do not support the SAF.
This app aims at allowing those apps to write to your SD Card again. It uses a method that should work on android 8.0 and above which involves remounting the SD Card, hence the name.
**Requirements:**
* A device with an SD Card slot
* Root access, since the app remounts some stuff
* Android 8.0 or later (but if you are running android 6.0.1, 7.0 or 7.1, it shouldn't hurt to just give it a shot)
The approach currently used by this app definitely only applies to devices running android 6 or later. It has successfully been tested with devices running android 8.1, 9 and 10 and unsucsessfully on devices running android 7.1, 6.0.1 and 5.1.
With android 10 & 11, storage access became more restricted, forcing all newer apps to go through SAF. It remains to be seen what this does to legacy storage access and this app, and what's to come with even newer android versions.
For more information, have a look at the [README](https://gitlab.com/giwiniswut/android-media-rw-remounter/-/blob/master/README.md) and the [Wiki](https://gitlab.com/giwiniswut/android-media-rw-remounter/-/wikis/Home).
**How to use it:**
* Install
* Launch once
* Grant permanent root access
* Insert or remount some storage
* Start writing files to the SD Card
**Notes:**
* The app must be launched at least once or else the system won't ever run it. This is a security mechanism of the Android platform to protect users from apps they've never launched and maybe never wanted to use or install.
* This restriction can be removed by installing the app as a privileged app, i.e. by writing the apk file to `/system/priv-app`.
* Upon the first mount with this app installed, i.e. when you actively need to grant root access, it is possible that the app will do nothing. This is because the app will currently be terminated if it has to wait more than a few seconds for root access. Once root access has already been granted and the app is immediately given root access every time it needs it, everything should work as expected.
**How do i know if my device is compatible?**
TL;DR: Just give it a shot.
Ultimately, this app relies on how your specific device vendor chose to implement how your SD Card gets mounted and by which method write access gets removed. With pure android (AOSP), the approach with simple remounting of the SD Card will work from android 8.0 and above, where it uses `sdcardfs` to do the job, a special filesystem originally developed by Samsung. If you have a Samsung device, it's very much possible that it already uses `sdca
**DISCLAIMER**
This is currently a very small and spontaneous project released in the hopes of being useful. While i take my best care to design this application to be stable and never harmful, i cannot guarantee any kind of safety. Use of this application happens on your own risk and discretion, especially since i can only test the application on the few devices that i own. If in major doubt, you might want to test the functionality of the app on your device with an unimportant SD Card first to eliminate any possiblity of data loss.
That being said, there's currently nothing destructive going on and misbehavior should entirely be limited to failure of enabling write access. Anything this app might currently do wrong if running on a wrong device should entirely be revertable by uninstalling it and remounting your SD Card.
**What is this**
With android 4.4, Google decided that it would be time for a new and fancy way to access your internal storage and introduced the Storage Access Framework (SAF). You might have had some contact with it over time.
Sadly, with this new feature Google also decided to remove SD Card write access like it used to exist, forcing every app to go through SAF if they want to write something to the SD Card. This required each developer to update their apps. Until this day, some apps still do not support the SAF.
This app aims at allowing those apps to write to your SD Card again. It uses a method that should work on android 8.0 and above which involves remounting the SD Card, hence the name.
**Requirements:**
* A device with an SD Card slot
* Root access, since the app remounts some stuff
* Android 8.0 or later (but if you are running android 6.0.1, 7.0 or 7.1, it shouldn't hurt to just give it a shot)
The approach currently used by this app definitely only applies to devices running android 6 or later. It has successfully been tested with devices running android 8.1, 9 and 10 and unsucsessfully on devices running android 7.1, 6.0.1 and 5.1.
With android 10 & 11, storage access became more restricted, forcing all newer apps to go through SAF. It remains to be seen what this does to legacy storage access and this app, and what's to come with even newer android versions.
For more information, have a look at the [README](https://gitlab.com/giwiniswut/android-media-rw-remounter/-/blob/master/README.md) and the [Wiki](https://gitlab.com/giwiniswut/android-media-rw-remounter/-/wikis/Home).
**How to use it:**
* Install
* Launch once
* Grant permanent root access
* Insert or remount some storage
* Start writing files to the SD Card
**Notes:**
* The app must be launched at least once or else the system won't ever run it. This is a security mechanism of the Android platform to protect users from apps they've never launched and maybe never wanted to use or install.
* This restriction can be removed by installing the app as a privileged app, i.e. by writing the apk file to `/system/priv-app`.
* Upon the first mount with this app installed, i.e. when you actively need to grant root access, it is possible that the app will do nothing. This is because the app will currently be terminated if it has to wait more than a few seconds for root access. Once root access has already been granted and the app is immediately given root access every time it needs it, everything should work as expected.
**How do i know if my device is compatible?**
TL;DR: Just give it a shot.
Ultimately, this app relies on how your specific device vendor chose to implement how your SD Card gets mounted and by which method write access gets removed. With pure android (AOSP), the approach with simple remounting of the SD Card will work from android 8.0 and above, where it uses `sdcardfs` to do the job, a special filesystem originally developed by Samsung. If you have a Samsung device, it's very much possible that it already uses `sdca