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iOS 11 Beta 3 - Files - Creating new folder
- Thread starter Rjoynt
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That's the same for everybody. That's either Apple's plan, or more than likely they just don't have it ready for beta.
Just tried it again to conferm...
To make a new folder...navigate to folder you want the new folder to be in...long press on the iPad/3D press on iPhone...then you should get a pop-up that gives you the option. I know it’s wonky, but there you go.
Now they need to put in an option to rename files.
EDIT: My bad, you can rename using the same technique as adding a new folder, you just have to do it on the file you want to rename.
To make a new folder...navigate to folder you want the new folder to be in...long press on the iPad/3D press on iPhone...then you should get a pop-up that gives you the option. I know it’s wonky, but there you go.
Now they need to put in an option to rename files.
EDIT: My bad, you can rename using the same technique as adding a new folder, you just have to do it on the file you want to rename.
...and I’m on a IPP 10.5, so what’s your point? If you are on the newest 11.0 beta it should work.
So, as far as I can tell, "On My iPad" is really meant for accessing the sandbox of apps that enable it. Not to be a storage location onto itself.
I've got an internal app that lets you modify the contents of its Documents folder through Files this way, so you can add/move/rename/copy files in and out of the App's local storage. But you can't create new top-level folders outside of an App's sandbox.
I've got an internal app that lets you modify the contents of its Documents folder through Files this way, so you can add/move/rename/copy files in and out of the App's local storage. But you can't create new top-level folders outside of an App's sandbox.
In what way doesn’t it make sense? I would agree it is unintuitive if you see “On My iPad” as synonymous with the Mac’s user folder, but for the purpose of making App-owned files accessible, it makes sense (I.e. iTunes Sharing style). I’d also ask what you expect to happen to files you create outside the app sandboxes. Apps can’t access them without going through the document picker at that point, so should that content live with a file provider like Dropbox, or in this ether of not owned by anything, and requiring extra steps to get to, or make accessible to other devices? I’m not entirely sure there is a correct answer here without tearing down the sandboxes themselves and providing a common Documents folder. Which I know people want, but this is not it. They could possibly get away with it if enough apps adopted the UIDocumentBrowser model that iWork uses, and was added to iOS 11, but they seem more interested in having it tie into document providers than explicit local storage.
I half expect Readdle to have a local storage document provider aimed at iOS 11 with the new features built on top of their Documents app.
Hi, first of all, thanks for your interesting reply!
I’ve always thought that the sandbox, the way they implemented it, has helped in some ways (iPhone) and damaged them a lot on others. It’s one of the reasons, if not the main one, why the Mac App store is arguably dead (that and the fact that it’s a bad app that under Eddy Cue has been basically unmantained). As you know, iOS 10.3 brought APFS. That was a big innovation and it allows to “work around” the sand box by making copies of files without actually copying data (therefore the operation is istantaneus and doesn’t require additional space). The iOS11 drag and drop was built on this principle. So What happens in the “iCloud Drive” section of the Files App if you create a folders outside of an app sandbox and put some files in it? You can open them, the system will make copies inside the sandbox of the app you open with.
I guess they should do the same in the ”on my iPad section”, for consistency at least.
I don’t love this approach but it’s better than nothing and, like you rightly said, there’s no way around it until apple rethinks its sandbox.
As someone who works on a Mac app that is sandboxed but isn't distributed on the store, for us, it is more the other restrictions that are the problem. The limitations for sandboxing of Apps on the Mac are actually pretty reasonable, since just using an open dialog or the user dragging a file onto the app "punches a hole" in the sandbox and gives permission to the app to read the file in place. So I would actually say that there is very good reason to make sure your apps are sandboxed on macOS, store or no store. Or at the very least, signed. I would love to understand what scenario other developers are hitting that the various ways to punch out of the sandbox on macOS don't work. Because a simple app that uses Open/Save dialogs really has no excuse not to be sandboxed.
iOS' sandbox mostly never had a mechanism for providing an open dialog until iOS 8. So there was no way to punch through the sandbox and get permission to open files on other parts of the filesystem. Apple could have made it possible to have a wide-open Documents folder that you could just open files from using the document picker. That would make it like macOS' sandboxing if they did.
But I also think you mis-understand the AFPS copies. Those copies only get made if the drop target app requests them to be made. You can open files in-place. In iOS 8 and later, the document picker along with a document provider that allows in-place editing will punch a hole in the sandbox if the app opening the file wants to do so. That avoids the copy entirely. The real trick here is you need user-driven interaction to back the file access (which the document picker does). In iOS 11, drag and drop is now another user interaction that allows an app to punch through the sandbox and access files in-place if they want. Much like dropping a file on a sandboxed macOS app works.
If Apple wanted, they could make "On My iPad" an actual location, but it isn't. It's a virtual location that contains a set of real locations: Applications' Document Folders. I honestly think it's more that Apple doesn't want storage on iOS that isn't associated with some provider. Which is definitely something tech-saavy users may not really want, but less tech-saavy users may appreciate.
That said, I don't find it a huge loss so long as something like BTSync works well as a provider on iOS 11, allowing me to do more direct sync between the desktop and my iPad, versus being forced into cloud storage. Unfortunately, that last bit is more up to the dev, because their implementation of being a document provider is kinda terrible in comparison to Dropbox and other more mainstream providers that actually let you download files through the picker for use.
Excellent. I've tried to explain some of this in several threads but never in such a complete fashion. Very informative.