Is it possible to reorganize the SD card? Because it is a mess in there

Question

One of the things I hate about Android is the folder organization. Each app creates its own folder, usually in the root of the SD card. When I'm trying to find something, I have to search it through long lists of app-specific folders.

Is it possible to reorganize these? For example, this is how I would like my SD card to look like:

• Android: OS specific data
• AppData: Application specific data. This is where every app puts its settings and data, not where they want
• Documents
• Downloads
• Pictures
• Music
• Video etc.

So in other words, can I restrict where apps put their data?

Answer 1

You cannot restrict where the applications write the data on the sdcard. You can go and delete what ever you want on the sdcard, but it may be data for an application. If you move it, the application will think it has been deleted or doesn't exist, and it will just create the data in the same place again.

Google recommends applications use the /sdcard/Android/data/ folder, but if the application has permissions to write to the sdcard, they can write where ever they want on it. Some applications were created before the recommendations, others may not know the recommendation, and others may not care for what ever reason.

The "standard" is the following for non-application specific data:

Music/
Podcasts/
Ringtones/
Alarms/
Notifications/
Pictures/
Movies/
Download/

and then application specific is:
Android/data/<application>

Answer 2

The fact is that Android is open enough for every dev to do whatever they want. There are some specific places certain stuff goes like the media folder and the .android_secure folder, as an example. The good news is that you can do a lot of cleaning up yourself by just browsing in there but be careful you don't delete data files and db's for apps still installed.

hth