How can I get the external SD card path for Android 4.0+?
Samsung Galaxy S3 has an external SD card slot, which is mounted to /mnt/extSdCard.
How can I get this path by something like Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory()?
This will return mnt/sdcard, and I can't find the API for the external SD card. (Or removable USB storage on some tablets.)
I have a variation on a solution I found here
public static HashSet<String> getExternalMounts() {
final HashSet<String> out = new HashSet<String>();
String reg = "(?i).*vold.*(vfat|ntfs|exfat|fat32|ext3|ext4).*rw.*";
String s = "";
try {
final Process process = new ProcessBuilder().command("mount")
.redirectErrorStream(true).start();
process.waitFor();
final InputStream is = process.getInputStream();
final byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
while (is.read(buffer) != -1) {
s = s + new String(buffer);
}
is.close();
} catch (final Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
// parse output
final String[] lines = s.split("\n");
for (String line : lines) {
if (!line.toLowerCase(Locale.US).contains("asec")) {
if (line.matches(reg)) {
String[] parts = line.split(" ");
for (String part : parts) {
if (part.startsWith("/"))
if (!part.toLowerCase(Locale.US).contains("vold"))
out.add(part);
}
}
}
}
return out;
}
The original method was tested and worked with
- Huawei X3 (stock)
- Galaxy S2 (stock)
- Galaxy S3 (stock)
I'm not certain which android version these were on when they were tested.
I've tested my modified version with
- Moto Xoom 4.1.2 (stock)
- Galaxy Nexus (cyanogenmod 10) using an otg cable
- HTC Incredible (cyanogenmod 7.2) this returned both the internal and external. This device is kinda an oddball in that its internal largely goes unused as getExternalStorage() returns a path to the sdcard instead.
and some single storage devices that use an sdcard as their main storage
- HTC G1 (cyanogenmod 6.1)
- HTC G1 (stock)
- HTC Vision/G2 (stock)
Excepting the Incredible all these devices only returned their removable storage. There are probably some extra checks I should be doing, but this is at least a bit better than any solution I've found thus far.
I found more reliable way to get paths to all SD-CARDs in system. This works on all Android versions and return paths to all storages (include emulated).
Works correctly on all my devices.
P.S.: Based on source code of Environment class.
private static final Pattern DIR_SEPORATOR = Pattern.compile("/");
/**
* Raturns all available SD-Cards in the system (include emulated)
*
* Warning: Hack! Based on Android source code of version 4.3 (API 18)
* Because there is no standart way to get it.
* TODO: Test on future Android versions 4.4+
*
* @return paths to all available SD-Cards in the system (include emulated)
*/
public static String[] getStorageDirectories()
{
// Final set of paths
final Set<String> rv = new HashSet<String>();
// Primary physical SD-CARD (not emulated)
final String rawExternalStorage = System.getenv("EXTERNAL_STORAGE");
// All Secondary SD-CARDs (all exclude primary) separated by ":"
final String rawSecondaryStoragesStr = System.getenv("SECONDARY_STORAGE");
// Primary emulated SD-CARD
final String rawEmulatedStorageTarget = System.getenv("EMULATED_STORAGE_TARGET");
if(TextUtils.isEmpty(rawEmulatedStorageTarget))
{
// Device has physical external storage; use plain paths.
if(TextUtils.isEmpty(rawExternalStorage))
{
// EXTERNAL_STORAGE undefined; falling back to default.
rv.add("/storage/sdcard0");
}
else
{
rv.add(rawExternalStorage);
}
}
else
{
// Device has emulated storage; external storage paths should have
// userId burned into them.
final String rawUserId;
if(Build.VERSION.SDK_INT < Build.VERSION_CODES.JELLY_BEAN_MR1)
{
rawUserId = "";
}
else
{
final String path = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getAbsolutePath();
final String[] folders = DIR_SEPORATOR.split(path);
final String lastFolder = folders[folders.length - 1];
boolean isDigit = false;
try
{
Integer.valueOf(lastFolder);
isDigit = true;
}
catch(NumberFormatException ignored)
{
}
rawUserId = isDigit ? lastFolder : "";
}
// /storage/emulated/0[1,2,...]
if(TextUtils.isEmpty(rawUserId))
{
rv.add(rawEmulatedStorageTarget);
}
else
{
rv.add(rawEmulatedStorageTarget + File.separator + rawUserId);
}
}
// Add all secondary storages
if(!TextUtils.isEmpty(rawSecondaryStoragesStr))
{
// All Secondary SD-CARDs splited into array
final String[] rawSecondaryStorages = rawSecondaryStoragesStr.split(File.pathSeparator);
Collections.addAll(rv, rawSecondaryStorages);
}
return rv.toArray(new String[rv.size()]);
}
I guess to use the external sdcard you need to use this:
new File("/mnt/external_sd/")
OR
new File("/mnt/extSdCard/")
in your case...
in replace of Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory()
Works for me. You should check whats in the directory mnt first and work from there..
You should use some type of selection method to choose which sdcard to use:
File storageDir = new File("/mnt/");
if(storageDir.isDirectory()){
String[] dirList = storageDir.list();
//TODO some type of selecton method?
}
I was using Dmitriy Lozenko's solution until i checked on an Asus Zenfone2, Marshmallow 6.0.1 and the solution is not working. The solution failed when getting EMULATED_STORAGE_TARGET, specifically for microSD path, i.e: /storage/F99C-10F4/. I edited the code to get the emulated root paths directly from emulated application paths with context.getExternalFilesDirs(null); and add more known phone-model-specific physical paths.
To make our life easier, I made a library here. You can use it via gradle, maven, sbt, and leiningen build system.
If you like the old-fashioned way, you can also copy paste the file directly from here, but you will not know if there is an update in the future without checking it manually.
If you have any question or suggestion, please let me know
In order to retrieve all the External Storages (whether they are SD cards or internal non-removable storages), you can use the following code:
final String state = Environment.getExternalStorageState();
if ( Environment.MEDIA_MOUNTED.equals(state) || Environment.MEDIA_MOUNTED_READ_ONLY.equals(state) ) { // we can read the External Storage...
//Retrieve the primary External Storage:
final File primaryExternalStorage = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory();
//Retrieve the External Storages root directory:
final String externalStorageRootDir;
if ( (externalStorageRootDir = primaryExternalStorage.getParent()) == null ) { // no parent...
Log.d(TAG, "External Storage: " + primaryExternalStorage + "\n");
}
else {
final File externalStorageRoot = new File( externalStorageRootDir );
final File[] files = externalStorageRoot.listFiles();
for ( final File file : files ) {
if ( file.isDirectory() && file.canRead() && (file.listFiles().length > 0) ) { // it is a real directory (not a USB drive)...
Log.d(TAG, "External Storage: " + file.getAbsolutePath() + "\n");
}
}
}
}
Alternatively, you might use System.getenv("EXTERNAL_STORAGE") to retrieve the primary External Storage directory (e.g. "/storage/sdcard0") and System.getenv("SECONDARY_STORAGE") to retieve the list of all the secondary directories (e.g. "/storage/extSdCard:/storage/UsbDriveA:/storage/UsbDriveB"). Remember that, also in this case, you might want to filter the list of secondary directories in order to exclude the USB drives.
In any case, please note that using hard-coded paths is always a bad approach (expecially when every manufacturer may change it as pleased).