The current version works fine without full storage access. But I noticed one of the recent Alpha builds from Github requires full storage access.
This is actually a big deal - if someone were to insert something into the source code somehow, suddenly they can also exfiltrate all files like documents, photos and whatnot.
It is explained that this full access is needed to retain the collection if I uninstall AnkiDroid, however, this is absolutely not a concern for me, as I sync the collection via AnkiWeb and have backups on computer. And I’m sure there is a significant part of users who similarly do not need this. So would be great to leave the simple way without the invasive permission.
Oh, I think I realised what causes this, there are different flavours
full: F-Droid & GitHub Parallel apks
play: Google Play - does not have MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission as it is forbidden by Google, so app data is deleted on uninstall
So I want the play flavour. But, very unfortunately, the parallel APKs aren’t using it, which is really too bad for previewing the new stuff. Well, except that I can build from source which is very fortunately relatively easy
