There was a time when iOS and iPadOS was less evolved, and you needed something commonly called file drawer apps to bounce files around. If you wanted to upload an edited image to a web interface, but you had your edited photo in Pixelmator, you were kind of stuck. It was a mess, filled with workarounds and the like, before the Files app we have today, but honestly, afterwards too because even though it’s getting better, Files isn’t what it should or could be.
So, you installed a file drawer app, and shared (using the share sheet) your files to said app, and hoped that whatever app you wanted to move the file to would support importing it. I’ve written about that in the past, in one of the earliest issues of the Switch to iPad newsletter (please subscribe).
Fast-forward to today, and the Files app will actually do for most people. You can easily get to the most recent files added, which means that downloading and/or saving a file of any kind to Files will make it easy to find. And the Files app has the benefit of being tightly integrated into iPadOS, meaning that it’s easy to, say, upload a file in a web interface from the Downloads folder.
Does that mean that there’s no room for file drawer apps anymore?
Oh, no, there definitely is.
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