I think having new files pulled in automatically is a "nice to have" - the advantage of having lots of file providers accessible through a system-level mechanism IMHO outweighs the disadvantage that on a few of them the user might have to select new files manually.
beorg keeps a local copy of all the org files it works with. This allows beorg to work offline regardless of which sync method it is working with. So when beorg starts, if you modify a file in beorg or if you tap the sync button then beorg works out which files it has changed, which files were changed remotely (e.g. in Dropbox) and then copies files as appropriate to and from from the remote source (e.g. Dropbox). Some file provider apps on iOS allow another app to select a folder and then the initiating app can transparently work with that folder. This works for apps such as Working Copy and Secure ShellFish. In my testing however Google Drive don't allow another app to select a whole folder to work with - they only allow you to select an individual file at a time.
Potentially I could have beorg get the user to select each individual org file they wanted to use within beorg - however for many use cases where changes are also being made in macOS/Windows/Linux this would prove to be a limitation as new files wouldn't be automatically pulled into beorg and shown on the agenda, tasks or files tabs.
> don't support the user picking a folder and granting access to all of the files within it to another app
Please excuse me if I misunderstood your point, but isn't it what you can do with some reader apps? Like on my iPad I can attach my Dropbox or Google Drive to apps like Adobe Reader or Liquid Text, pull books from those folders, make notes and save modified PDFs back. Is it different for apps like BeOrg?
I've mostly got allowing beorg to choose a folder from another app as a sync source - however it turns the Google Drive app (as well as the Dropbox app, and I'm guessing other cloud storage apps) don't support the user picking a folder and granting access to all of the files within it to another app. So most of these sorts of apps are greyed out in the document picker. So this stops apps such as beorg, iA Writer, Ulysses, ... transparently using files managed by these apps.
I've just released 3.9.0 and this will be the next big feature I'll be looking at.
Hi Matthew!
Any update on the following:
> My aim next (in terms of sync) is to allow beorg to choose a folder from another app as it's sync source.
Beorg is the only reason why I'm still using dropbox and moving away from it to GDrive would be very helpful.
Yes, using those facilities in iOS is the intention. You would also be able to use it with apps such as Working Copy to have beorg use a git repository to sync with, etc.
Yeah, it's a tough call. I can understand that. I'm currently just using a service to sync Dropbox with Google Drive 路♂️
Allowing beorg to choose a folder from another app sounds like a great idea! I wasn't aware that was a possibility. Is this what you are referring to: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/extensions/file-providers/? It seems simpler than integrating different external APIs if you can use the file system that those apps are already using directly.
The previous sync extension I added (for Box) didn't really get too much usage, despite signs that it was important for quite a lot of people. It's difficult to judge how many people would benefit from Google Drive support so far. My aim next (in terms of sync) is to allow beorg to choose a folder from another app as it's sync source. If Google Drive acts as a document provider then it should be covered by that feature (in theory!)
Google Driver support would be great. I would gladly support it! Can features be voted on? How do you know know when there are enough people interested?
+1 Google Drive sync please (would happily pay for feature)
Another vote for Google drive support. At work Dropbox, Box, Onedrive & iCloud are all blocked but not Google drive.
John Smith
Hi: I would love if Google Drive is added as an option for cloud sync. I tried iCloud but does not sync well on Windows and I use Google Drive only as my cloud storage.
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