Allow Bloom Reader to display books from an SD card

Question from user:

I’ve got another question about Bloom. Before I go out and buy 80 SD cards, could you tell me if I can save the Bloom audio books (content files) on an external SD card? The app is internally installed, but I am afraid the memory will be too small to hold all the talking books.

Hi Liz,

That’s not a feature yet, but it’s something we could add. We could have the app check the sd card for a folder named “Bloom” and make books found there available just like books stored internally on the device.

Would that work for your situation?

-Rick Conrad

Response from the team in Indonesia:

We would LOVE that feature! The talking books use a lot more memory than cheap devices typically have space for. I assumed Bloom could do it, but also had this sinking feeling it might not be possible.

Please tell them YES!!!

Can someone please make this a feature request.

Liz

This is in the latest Alpha. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

I’ve looked at this briefly and also asked the team in Indonesia to check it.

Bloom found the .bloomd file on my SD card when I clicked “Find Bloom books on this device”, but it then made a copy of the file in \internal storage\Bloom. So it’s actually in two places now - using space on my SD card and on my phone.

Devices come with limited internal storage space, so it would be helpful for Bloom to be able to find them on the SD card and not copy them to the internal storage.

Sorry for the problem with the duplicates!

And sorry for the confusion due to my lack of clarification…
We have just recently added two separate features.

  1. A menu item the user can select to have BR scan the device for bloom books and bundles. This is primarily to work around various issues users have had trying to open .bloomd files from their devices’ file managers.
  2. The ability for Bloom to read books from the SD card directly without needing to copy those files to the regular Bloom folder in the device’s internal storage. I didn’t clarify that this requires the books to be in a Bloom folder at the root of your SD card. With this feature, your books should just show up in the list without having to run the “Find…” feature.

We’ll have to think some more about the interaction of these two features. As you pointed out, often the user doesn’t want to make a copy. But other times, that might be exactly what he or she wants. Short of asking the user (which always has its own complications), maybe we should copy books which are found outside that root Bloom folder on the SD card but not the ones inside it…

Can this feature request be re-opened? Or another one created for the issue related to the duplicates. (I tried to respond by email, but can’t because the request is closed).

With the books on the SD card, Bloom Reader found them when I clicked "find bloom books on this device". When I moved them to a folder named Bloom at the root level of the SD card, they appeared in Bloom automatically.

In both situations, a copy of the file appeared in the Bloom folder on the phone (internal storage). The team in Indonesia who requested this (and others who are using devices with limited storage space) would appreciate if Bloom reader can access the books on the SD card without making a copy on the device.

We are not talking about copying one book to a single SD card, but multiple talking books on multiple SD cards for distribution within a literacy program.

In the latest Alpha, we have changed the directory from which Bloom can read bloom books directly. Rather than Bloom, it is now called BloomExternal to give the user a better clue that this is a special way Bloom can read directly from external storage.

Bloom books and bookshelves in the BloomExternal on the SD card root will not be copied to the internal storage when the user uses the “Find Bloom books on this device” feature.

Note, however, that Bloom bundles are treated differently from Bloom books and bookshelves. The “Find Bloom books on this device” feature will extract a Bloom bundle into the Bloom directory in internal storage from anywhere it finds one. This is because Bloom bundles are not read directly but must be extracted before the books can be read by Bloom Reader.

Hope this clarifies the current situation. Please let us know if we need to make some further improvements.