App-specific external storage: how can other apps access it?

Question

Android documentation mentions this:

External storage directories: These directories include both a dedicated location for storing persistent files, and another location for storing cache data. Although it's possible for another app to access these directories if that app has the proper permissions, the files stored in these directories are meant for use only by your app. If you specifically intend to create files that other apps should be able to access, your app should store these files in the shared storage part of external storage instead

How do I make sure that other apps don't access the external storage? Also, is it true across all Android versions?

Answer 1

You need to create an abstraction using Content Provider .

"A content provider presents data to external applications as one or more tables that are similar to the tables found in a relational database. A row represents an instance of some type of data the provider collects, and each column in the row represents an individual piece of data collected for an instance."

Refer to the link above for documentation.