As a technical person, who only ever used Android, I have no idea how files really work on my phone. I even used adb a few times but still. From my PoV there are no "files", just photos, videos, screenshots, downloads, application data, applications and system data - all completely different kinds of data.

In my files app i see "downloads" "images", "videos", "apps", "starred", "safe folder". In "images" i see pictures tagged "downloads", "camera", "DCIM", "screenshots" and one odd "2024-12-03_description_here" that I clearly names myself but don't remember doing that.

I have no clue how that maps to a physical phone filesystem, even though I know it's there. I'm sure teenagers don't know that too.

Right as an Android user you don’t have a separate photo library where pictures go to? (yes I know this isn’t true).

Yes there has been a Files app on iOS devices for well over a decade

> Right as an Android user you don’t have a separate photo library where pictures go to

Yes, which gets autosynced to my immich instance

Both iPhone and iPad have an app named "Files" too.

I'm not an Apple user, but I found this relevant video interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnPAhVxsPHE

> Your iPhone is Lying to You About Files...

> And you might be thinking, finally, we have the real directory structure of all the folders inside of the iOS device. But that's actually just another illusion. Now the files manager is using guess what? A SQLite database. So it's more just like a generic lookup table inside of that so that we can preserve the sandboxing of the untrusted files for the application. So what it's doing is it's it's creating this kind of fake directory structure and then if you try to go to an associated file, it's doing a lookup into the SQLite database to find the real location of the actual file.

Same same, but different...

But it gives you access to almost none of your actual files

So exactly which of “your actual files” do you need access to?

The Files app cannot access images in the Photos app or music in the Music app. The only way to add music to the Music app is to copy the files onto the iPhone from a computer. You can however install VLC player and copy the files into the VLC folder. I guess VLC player is more trustworthy than Apple Music considering it's less isolated. Or Apple really wants you to pay the Music subscription, who knows. Want to give another app access to these files? You'll have to duplicate them, using up more storage space.

I get that it's supposedly about security, but this is not the only secure way. It is however the most convenient secure way for Apple, as now the only simple method of backing up and syncing files through all those isolated containers is iCloud.

That’s a fair point. I was expecting the typical HN geek answer that you can’t access system files on iOS and you don’t have root access

Is that typical? I've seen complaints about lack of root access, and complaints that apps don't work with files in folders, but I haven't really seem them conflated the way you're describing.

That's what the file browser is called on iOS as well :)