What Will Happen in Android R?

The author of this book is a time traveler, but only in the forward direction at a rate of one millisecond per millisecond.

(in other words, the author of this book is not really a time traveler)

We have no guaranteed way of knowing what 2020 and Android R will bring… but we can make some guesses.

Official Warning

In April 2019, Google announced that the then-forthcoming Q Beta 3 would allow apps to opt out of scoped storage. In that announcement, though, they wrote:

Scoped Storage will be required in next year’s major platform release for all apps, independent of target SDK level, so we recommend you add support to your app well in advance.

Hoped-For Outcome

With luck, Google will come to its senses, and only enable scoped storage on Android R for apps with a targetSdkVersion of 29 (or perhaps 'R') or higher. This would be in line with how targetSdkVersion normally works. And, given that the Play Store will require a targetSdkVersion of 29 in the second half of 2020, this policy will affect all actively-maintained apps. Yet, it would not break legacy apps that will not be updated to avoid the Environment methods or other ways of attempting to access inaccessible areas of external storage.

At the 2019 Android Developer Summit, Google made some statements that suggest that this indeed is their plan.