Please Move App Data Folder

08-20-2022, 03:13 PM #1

With the app data folder in its current position of /storage/emulated/0/Android/data, it's impossible to use texture packs on any Android device with Scoped Storage. Please move the app data folder up to /storage/emulated/0.

**mbc07** · (This post was last modified: 08-20-2022, 04:13 PM by mbc07.)

We can't. To use the old "dolphin-emu" path at the root of the external storage, Scoped Storage would need to be dropped and thus we wouldn't be able to publish the app anymore on the Play Store, as Google enforces Scoped Storage since last year. For now, Android users can use the import/export user data feature to make changes to the Dolphin user folder, or, depending of the device, manage the contents from a PC using an USB cable and MTP...

08-22-2022, 04:48 AM #3

(08-20-2022, 04:12 PM)mbc07 Wrote: We can't. To use the old "dolphin-emu" path at the root of the external storage, Scoped Storage would need to be dropped and thus we wouldn't be able to publish the app anymore on the Play Store, as Google enforces Scoped Storage since last year. For now, Android users can use the import/export user data feature to make changes to the Dolphin user folder, or, depending of the device, manage the contents from a PC using an USB cable and MTP...

I have seen other apps let you choose a folder outside of the scope to do things in. It would be nice to have that option for the paths menu. (and things like the memory card)

**JosJuice** · 08-22-2022, 05:19 AM #4

(08-22-2022, 04:48 AM)djtravz Wrote: I have seen other apps let you choose a folder outside of the scope to do things in. It would be nice to have that option for the paths menu. (and things like the memory card)

In order to do that, we would have to use the Storage Access Framework API, which is much slower at operations like enumerating files. Allowing you to use it for things like the Wii NAND would kill emulation performance.

Regarding memory cards, I'm not sure if the performance impact there would be catastrophic or just annoying. But because implementing support for the Storage Access Framework in a C++-heavy app like Dolphin takes a lot of work, nobody has really wanted to implement it just to see how bad it would be.

As you may have seen, Dolphin already uses this approach for the game list. It took a lot of work from our side and did significantly slow down the speed of game list scanning, but since game list scanning was very fast originally, it only takes on the order of seconds to scan for games with the Storage Access Framework. Not all the parts of Dolphin have the luxury of being that fast to begin with, because some of them simply have a lot more filesystem work they need to do.

08-22-2022, 09:43 AM #5

(08-22-2022, 05:19 AM)JosJuice Wrote: In order to do that, we would have to use the Storage Access Framework API, which is much slower at operations like enumerating files. Allowing you to use it for things like the Wii NAND would kill emulation performance.

Regarding memory cards, I'm not sure if the performance impact there would be catastrophic or just annoying. But because implementing support for the Storage Access Framework in a C++-heavy app like Dolphin takes a lot of work, nobody has really wanted to implement it just to see how bad it would be.

As you may have seen, Dolphin already uses this approach for the game list. It took a lot of work from our side and did significantly slow down the speed of game list scanning, but since game list scanning was very fast originally, it only takes on the order of seconds to scan for games with the Storage Access Framework. Not all the parts of Dolphin have the luxury of being that fast to begin with, because some of them simply have a lot more filesystem work they need to do.

Would it be possible to use an APK of an old version that doesn't include scoped storage?

**mbc07** · (This post was last modified: 08-23-2022, 02:13 AM by mbc07.)

Dolphin 5.0-15341 is the last version without Scoped Storage. If you install it then update to a later version, Android would not enforce Scoped Storage to the app and Dolphin would keep using "dolphin-emu" at the root of the internal storage (more details here). However, Play Store builds can't be installed on top of the APKs downloaded from our main site (and vice-versa) without uninstalling the app first, so you would lose the ability to use Play Store to keep the app updated if you go that route...