SAF Media Scanner

A plain audio file metadata extractor ("scanner") especially for classical music. It basically creates SQLite databases to be used by player applications like the Unpopular Music Player or the Opus 1 Music Player.

Contrary to the Classical Music Scanner, the SAF Media Scanner exclusively uses Google's Storage Access Framework (SAF) instead of the standard File scheme. Additionally the scanner copies, if possible, the resulting database file to the respective directory, in its dedicated subdirectory ClassicalMusicDb. If this is not possible, it remains in internal memory and kept there, with an informative file name that allows later to derive the respective scanned path.

Technical Background

By design any file access via Google's SAF is extremely slow compared to the standard methods (either via Java or native code). Thus it is recommended to use SAF only if necessary. Generally there has been much discussion and critics in the Android developer community complaining about Google's decisions and restrictions.

As SAF unfortunately is exclusively available in Java, this program is also forced to use slow Java code where the Classical Music Scanner runs in native (written in 'C') code.

Application Field

The SAF scanner can access USB memory devices, like USB sticks via OTG adapter, in Android 6, 7 and 8. Note that Android 9 and 10 natively allow (read) file access to USB memory, just like to SD cards.

Note that without SAF and without manage files permission, Android 11 and newer deny any access to non-private memory, except media files.

The SAF scanner can extract album art on SD cards and USB memory devices, this is currently not possible with the classical scanner, because without SAF it is limited to read-only access.

The SAF scanner can access SMB or SFTP servers, if the respective document provider is installed.

The SAF scanner even deals with non-seekable files by reading them completely into memory before further processing.