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On your computer, do you inspect the details of a file using Explorer? On the Mac do you do that with the Finder. Or do you actually open the file with an application?

Do you expect to use Windows explorer or the Finder to “convert file types”?

Using iOS 26 on my phone, I held down a file and there is an “Open With” option that gave me a choice of how to open the file.

Across applications? Applications these days save files using the File dialog, they may by default store them in a folder accesible by Files. Yes I know some apps still store their data in their own sandbox. But that’s not the case generally for standard productivity apps.



If I need to know the details of a file (eg file extension, size, location, etc) I generally use the Finder for that, yes.

I do frequently convert file types through the Finder. Bulk converting a bunch of photos, for example, is easier to do through a file browser. Even if I were opening a different app to do that, a standard file browser would be the interface I would want for that.

It’s great if more iOS applications are storing files as regular files on the filesystem now. Apple should have encouraged that in the first place. There was some goofy notion they were going to get rid of the idea of “files” with iOS, but that’s not actually a good idea.


> If I need to know the details of a file (eg file extension, size, location, etc) I generally use the Finder for that, yes.

As you would with the Files app…

> Even if I were opening a different app to do that, a standard file browser would be the interface I would want for that

Which iPad apps that allow you to work with files don’t use the standard files app interface when you open and save a file? How else would they work?

> It’s great if more iOS applications are storing files as regular files on the filesystem now. Apple should have encouraged that in the first place.

The Files app and the APIs were introduced in 2017.




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