« Scriptable Local » File provider for Files app

Scriptable
1

I see the In the documentation for documentsDirectory() that there should be a Scriptable Local File provider in the Files app, but I don’t find it, was it removed ?

2

The Scriptable folder in your iCloud Drive is meant with that.

3

Do you mean that depending of whether iCloud is enabled or not the file provider switch automatically from local to iCloud, and so it is in fact the same file provider ?

4

No I don’t think so. I think that you never will be able to access the local files in Scriptable regardless if you’ve activated iCloud drive for Scriptable or not. You can access the local files only with FileManager inside Scriptable.

5

While I have never seen it, and it certainly does not currently appear as a provider in file provider, I can’t help but think that the very specific and meaningful phrase, and the additional instructions in the documentation suggest that at some point @simonbs was considering a Scriptable file provider at some point, but has not (yet) implemented it; unless of course it is only enabled if you don’t use iCloud drive, in which case that would explain why I have never seen it.

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6

Oh shoot, that’s a leftover from the very early betas of Scriptable. It’s a little embarrassing that it’s still mentioned in the documentation :sweat_smile:

Originally I was working on a file provider for two reasons:

  1. If you use Scriptable without iCloud Drive enabled, scripts will be stored locally in a way that prevents you from seeing the actual JavaScript files on disk. That’s necessary in order for the scripts to be run from Shortcuts, the Share Sheet etc. However, during the beta it became clear that basically all of Scriptable’s users have iCloud Drive enabled, so this wasn’t really a problem.
  2. I thought it would open up interesting possibilities for scripts but it really didn’t. The combination of iCloud Drive and File Bookmarks is way more powerful.

Implementing a file provider is a lot of work and since no one would really benefit from it, I put that on pause and poured my time into other features.

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7

Thanks to all for your replies!