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What I don't like about Android is that you need root to have full access to your filesystem. That to me is a shame, let me have a privileges that allows me to

What I don't like about Android is that you need root to have full access to your filesystem. That to me is a shame, let me have a privileges that allows me to get access to app data. The current Android permission model doesn't allow, for example, to browse the data of the applications, i mean their folder in /data. For example if I want to backup app data on a cloud service, or make a full backup of the device, I simply can't. Either the app has to support a backup and restore feature to external storage, or you can't. Or I want to make some kind of integration that requires reading/writing directly on the sqlite database of an app, because it doesn't provide the facility that I need. To me it doesn't make a lot of sense, and it's the only reason I root my devices.

bakugo 2y ago
Agreed, accessing app data is the main reason I still root my Android devices today. Fun fact: whenever you download an image from the official Twitter android app, it saves a copy of that image to the app's data (not cache) and just leaves it there, forever. Since I have root, it doesn't really matter since I can literally just load up a file manager and delete the files as I would on a PC. But without root, there's nothing you can do about it other than wipe the app data completely every once in a while. Thankfully you don't lose much when doing this for this app, but this is far from the only app that has this sort of issue.
nurettin 2y ago
That would even make sense with the current restrictions. Just have a root shell app which gives unrestricted access to all folders. If the user wants to start it, they must authenticate.
kiririn 2y ago
Counter-intuitively, iOS does allow these things. Encrypted iTunes backups can be extracted and edited, revealing all* of the equivalent of /data on Android *A few apps like Signal think they know better and opt out of iTunes backups
- Hizonner 2y ago
  To be fair, here, Signal's whole original differentiating feature was cryptographically guaranteed forward secrecy (with non-interactive message delivery). Signal therefore uses "ratcheting keys". If you let the current version of your keys, or even your chat history, get into a backup, you've ruined the main point. I do tend to agree that that kind of forward secrecy isn't actually important for very many people, and most of those people have other, bigger leaks to worry about. I don't use Signal myself. But it's still the big thing Signal was originally created to offer.

bakugo 2y ago

Agreed, accessing app data is the main reason I still root my Android devices today. Fun fact: whenever you download an image from the official Twitter android app, it saves a copy of that image to the app's data (not cache) and just leaves it there, forever. Since I have root, it doesn't really matter since I can literally just load up a file manager and delete the files as I would on a PC. But without root, there's nothing you can do about it other than wipe the app data completely every once in a while. Thankfully you don't lose much when doing this for this app, but this is far from the only app that has this sort of issue.

nurettin 2y ago

That would even make sense with the current restrictions. Just have a root shell app which gives unrestricted access to all folders. If the user wants to start it, they must authenticate.

kiririn 2y ago

Counter-intuitively, iOS does allow these things. Encrypted iTunes backups can be extracted and edited, revealing all* of the equivalent of /data on Android *A few apps like Signal think they know better and opt out of iTunes backups

Hizonner 2y ago
To be fair, here, Signal's whole original differentiating feature was cryptographically guaranteed forward secrecy (with non-interactive message delivery). Signal therefore uses "ratcheting keys". If you let the current version of your keys, or even your chat history, get into a backup, you've ruined the main point. I do tend to agree that that kind of forward secrecy isn't actually important for very many people, and most of those people have other, bigger leaks to worry about. I don't use Signal myself. But it's still the big thing Signal was originally created to offer.