The first two Android Q betas introduced mandatory granular storage permission options to improve security and experience, but they will only be optional for now after some concerns were raised.
Android Q is a fairly modest update from what we've seen so far, however one of its small but nifty improvements is the new ‘Scoped Storage' permission structure.
Scoped Storage is Google's term for the splitting of the current singular ‘storage access' permission into many specific subordinates for music, images, videos, etc…
Whilst these new permissions not only give users more information on what their apps are accessing and also provides more security in the doing of such, it also means that many, many apps which store very little information and never permanently will now not need to seek any permissions to do so as apps will now have access to their own little ‘walled garden' which is deleted when the app is uninstalled, which is a nice little simplification for users.
However, Google has encountered many issues with the rollout of SS in the betas of the new update as it breaks every single app which currently requires the old overarching ‘storage' permission due to being mandatory, which means the developers of all those apps would need to switch to the new permission structure by Android Q's official release; often far easier said than done.
Thus Google has decided to keep Scoped Storage optional for now; as of Android Q beta 3 the new permissions will simply be added to the old ones and will thus allow apps to continue functioning in the new Android, for now.
One would expect Google to make SS permissions mandatory again in Android R after developers have had time to update their processes, until which time I doubt we'll actually see many big apps switch.
Scoped Storage is a neat little change though.
Source: 9TO5Google
