The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/dr100 on 2025-01-07 10:55:15.
TLDR: I strongly recommend anyone who cares about ALL bytes in their files (specifically pictures and EXIF GPS tags, but this applies for any similar not yet born/known issue) to pull their data in at least TWO ways from Android and always compare the results before removing the originals from the device. As any redundancy you'd want to make things as independent as possible, and one should be something fundamentally different than regular Android apps, and one of the most reliable and the lowest level you can get without root is probably adb pull. This is also easy to automate/script, and works both over USB or WiFi.
Background: "for your security" Android is zeroing out part of the EXIF (the GPS data) in your media files (it presents a different file to the apps by default). This is done silently and with no warning. This is incredibly unpredictable depending on the vendor, Android specific patch level, if the app comes from the Play Store or not and whatever they did in the Play Store last month and so on. To be clear: I don't want to convince anyone to care about this data! It's your choice. If it's OK for you that your backup program gets from your phone slightly changed pictures in December versus in September, for the same files from the same device with the same program, even if they're the same size and time stamps, FINE, I don't intend to belittle you, convince you, or argue with you. No, this isn't reverse psychology. I'm just spreading some information around, do what you want with it.
What triggered this NOW? Well, it happened again with NextCloud. Click on And this brought me to this (still open since the first half of 2020!!!) ticket! link (it's under "this") from that post to get to the GitHub issue (that is not to advertise my own post but I don't want to link outside Reddit, the anti-spam is very twitchy). The post was from mid-2023, and the ticket from 2020, and the issue is not only open but there is new activity, in the sense that initially people started to lose their GPS data in backed up files slowly since 2020, then around 2022 it's been said, ok you need this "all files permission", put that and it'll work. Then mostly everyone did it around 2022-2024 and all was good, until it's been reported and confirmed over the last few weeks that AGAIN "something" changed and the permission went (completely silently) away and can't be brought back (and people got again "censored" files for 1-3 months)!
If you're looking through my posts I've had this rodeo a few times and from the usual handwavy pushback here are the honorable mentions:
- I see the issue in NextCloud's github, it's their bug, just fix it! - no, this happened to mostly any other similar program, starting with Seafile (NextCloud/OneCloud+Seafile are the golden trio of self-hosting programs of this type), many other picture-oriented programs, and even stock programs (like the official gallery from OnePlus)
- but it never happened to SyncThing! - yes, they were the best to proactively chase this ... until (see my posts, including sadly my perfectly on-spot foreshadowing) they got blocked in the Play Store since the last February and they're now gone completely! They had updates in F-Droid until December, but they threw the towel completely. Yes, there is syncthing-fork that's still mentioned and better than nothing but that's just a wrapper around the actual syncthing engine, and mostly just a personal project with small improvements for friends and family.
- just use the F-Droid version, it still works! - Yes, FOR NOW.
- I'm using Resilio Sync that works fine, or I'm using FolderSync or rsync/rclone from Termux, or some picture app that never had the problem, or where I could give the permissions easily and never had a problem since! - Yes, but that's pure chance, and you don't know if your luck holds next time. Also, even if you do multiple apps of this kind at the same time you still have a decent chance to get the mangled files, identically, from all of them! You could even make locally md5sums for all your pictures with Termux and get the mangled files there already! YES, for now non-Play Store apps can use a different (very old) API still available to get to the files, and that has less shenanigans. FOR NOW!
Just to be complete other non-regular-Android-app-ways to get access to your files would be:
- MTP (not straightforward to automate without third party tools, and not that reliable in my experience, especially with many files)
- maybe some
adb shellcommands (and make locally on the phone some archives with the desired files or at least some md5sums). Note this isn't the same with Termux shell access, even if it looks similar, as with Termux you just get the level of access Termux itself as Android app has.