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Hi Nik, any update on iCloud Drive support. I remember you discussing the challenges with it but can’t find that conversation.
I am working in an iCloud folder with nitro and it kind of works. It will load the folder and images, but it freezes a lot when scrolling as I’m guessing each image that comes into view immediately triggers a download to start.
Anyway, keen to hear any updates on plans to implement better support for iCloud Drive.
Thanks
Looking into it now. But, since you bring it up, the user experience is a question.
Right now, the OS will download the file when it comes into view, as you have experienced. The app could avoid that, but then you might get no thumbnail at all if there isn’t one accessible efficiently from the OS. I’m hoping that most of the time, a thumbnail will be available without downloading the file.
However, the real rub is badges / metadata, such as ratings, flags, editing state. Those require reading the XMP data. Currently, Nitro writes separate sidecars which would be fast to do, but I’m going to be moving to the Adobe standard, which is XMP for proprietary RAW (which I do today), but writing XMP into the original for DNG, JPEG, HEIF, etc. In that case, the app has no way to draw a correct ratings, flags, or edit badges until the original file is downloaded. That can be done in the background rather than upfront as it is today, but it’s not great.
I use iCloud Drive as a space-saving mechanism, not a sync. I will take lots of raws, process them locally, do some stuff, then I’m happy for them to offload to iCloud. Separately I have my iCloud Photos library which is where I’d do all my rating and browsing and so on.
So for me, I would be happy with something like:
– Nitro shows images if they are local
– If not, still show what it can (eg blank placeholders, counts etc
– Then some way of choosing the download behaviour. When selecting a folder in nitro, the options might be:
1. Automatically download (what it appears to do today)
2. Click to download (maybe with “download all” and “download single” buttons)The idea being I know what is in the folder and I know I want to work on in. So I don’t need to see the thumbnails before deciding to download. Or if I can’t remember, I can selectively choose to download selected files to view them.
Re metadata, I don’t know. Again I am using xmp sidecars so not fussed. For the other formats, no idea!
The only thing today that is annoying is the automatic download behaviour and the lag that causes. So perhaps the selective download behaviour I described could be a sensible initial feature (nitro could warn about the metadata issue for embedded camp formats).
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