Why Can’t iOS Have Smart Folders?
The only apps I know about that have added them for both macOS and iOS are Reminders and Notes, although I’ve found the implementation of them to be a bit weird. In both of those, you can’t add sub-conditions, so you can say all or any of a list of conditions, but you can’t say “all of these conditions and any of these conditions.” It might sound like a small thing, but it’s not.
Anyway, back to the topic. I want this, and I want Apple to add it. Part of me wonders if it’s just a matter of there not being an equivalent to NSRuleEditor in UIKit or SwiftUI, and so every app would have to implement the control on their own.
I was just thinking about this yesterday when reading about News Explorer 2.0 and how its complex filters can sync and work on iOS but can be edited only on macOS.
2 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
Marvis Pro (an iOS Apple Music player) has its own equivalent of smart folders. It supports nested boolean logic of the kind Collin mentions. Of course it's a totally custom UI since there is no iOS-provided framework. I wish Apple would add support for this type of thing more broadly to iOS.
@Nigel Yeah, actually I have tried that out in Marvis (great app), and I think it shows that this can totally work on an iPhone-sized screen.
