How to stop android from creating files and folders on the SD card Is there a way to stop android from creating folders on the SD card such as "Android" and "Download".
I have Android KitKat version 4.4.2.
It is an obnoxious programming practice prevalent in Android and it's apps, alright.

/system/etc/permissions/platform.xml can be used to NOT give permission to everyone, their grandmothers and their cats to poop folders and files left and right everywhere throughout your SD card, but is not the final solution... just a way to make it less bad.

If not, remember that Android runs on Linux and you can always use the rules of Linux against it... or the rules of the filesystem for instance... If the SD card has a FAT32 filesystem there cannot be folders and files with the same name... so... by creating files named "LOST.DIR", "ReceivedFiles", "Download" and so forth ensures no other folders will be created... lastly is just a matter of setting the proerties of those same files to "hidden" and the file manager to "not show hidden files/folders"...

They will still be there doing their function but just not so visually.

Ultimately it is up to the person who writes each app to store app related data in the /data partition instead of the SD card as it was intended to be.