The third Android 11 Developer Preview is now available, test it out and share your feedback.

App compatibility features for data storage

To help you support the latest versions of Android, the platform provides the following app compatibility feature for data storage.

Temporarily opt-out of scoped storage

Before your app is fully compatible with scoped storage, you can temporarily opt out by using one of the following methods:

  • Target Android 9 (API level 28) or lower.

  • If you target Android 10 (API level 29) or higher, set the value of requestLegacyExternalStorage to true in your app's manifest file:

    <manifest ... >
  <!-- This attribute is "false" by default on apps targeting
       Android 10 or higher. -->
    <application android:requestLegacyExternalStorage="true" ... >
      ...
    </application>
</manifest>

To test how an app targeting Android 9 or lower behaves when using scoped storage, you can opt in to the behavior by setting the value of requestLegacyExternalStorage to false.