The developers of the open-source collaboration platform NEXTCLOUD have recently explained the decision to limit the functionality of their mobile application. They mentioned Google’s dissatisfaction due to safety concerns, which led Google to restrict the NEXTCLOUD application, despite it having over a million installations. Google required that the application distributed through the Google Play store should not request full access to all files. Although the version available on F-Droid is used by most NextCloud users, the majority prefer Google Play.
Representatives of the NEXTCLOUD project reached out to Google, emphasizing that the ability to access all files is vital for synchronizing files between systems and enabling shared file access. This functionality is a key feature of NEXTCLOUD and sets it apart from competitors. The NEXTCLOUD application has been on Google Play since 2016 without any previous privacy complaints.
In response, Google Play’s support service simply repeated standard responses, urging developers to switch to alternative APIs that offer secure data handling. However, the recommended APIs are not suitable for NEXTCLOUD’s specific requirements. For instance, the SAF (Storage Access Framework) API is primarily used for file exchange between different apps, and the Mediastore API only deals with multimedia files.
To comply with Google’s requirements, the new version of the NEXTCLOUD app on Google Play now utilizes the Mediastore API to manage photos and videos. However, downloading other file types from Android devices through NEXTCLOUD is no longer possible if the app is downloaded from Google Play. Users who require this functionality are recommended to use the version from F-Droid instead.