With the upgrade to Kitkat finally available for the S4, new problems arose : android now restricts app access to external SD cards. Apps can read from SD card, but not store files anymore. This is rather annoying as I’m using the external SD card to store the maps for OsmAnd and the podcast for Podkicker. This represents several GB od data that would else be filling up the internal memory of my smartphone.

First search results with google indicate that the solution would be to root the device to remove this restriction.

I got a hint that in fact apps can be granted the right to store data on the external SD card - with the restriction that is must be stored below /storage/extSdCard/Android/data.

With this knowledge, I searched for “osmand storing on external SD” and “podkicker storing on external SD” and found following hints :

• https://code.google.com/p/osmand/issues/detail?id=2257
• http://www.podkicker.com/forum/topic/293/storing-podcasts-on-external-sd-card-in-android-442-kitkat/

So basically : put the card in a PC and create directories /storage/extSdCard/Android/data/net.osmand and /storage/extSdCard/Android/data/com.podkicker and move the stuff in there.