[LadyNike]

> The filesystem issue is going to be a problem for me. I have an app that writes about 1000 images a day from user photographs which should certainly not be mixed into the general images pool!

The app doesn't need to contribute the photos to the shared media store. It can if it wants to allow other apps to also have access, but it can also write them to its own private directory.

> And I want to be able to browse my filesystem. It sounds like that's basically out without rooting now.

The scoped storage changes are something that app developers must handle, but you, as a user, will still be able to browse the entire SD card. (I'm a member of developer relations on Android and wrote a proof of concept file browser that works just fine on Android Q. :)

[chaisoftware]

Any chance this PoC file browser is open source and available? I've been looking at these changes and I'm not sure how I should handle discovery of new devices, e.g. insertion of a new SD card, or an OTG USB device.

[sgc]

How does it work if I want to be able to browse that private directory with a file browser?

[LadyNike]

Generally, an app can ask the user to grant it access to other directories on the device, including the actual SD card root. (The user can also decide to only give the app access to a subset.)

Specifically, the API one uses is ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT_TREE.