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Has anyone else experienced this with iCloud and AudioShare?
I've been uploading a lot of loops into my AudioShare, so that I can play with them with the Blocs app. I have about 3.2 Gigs of loops installed (I've got several more gigs that I want to import, but I stopped for now until I figure this problem out). I noticed that the day after I uploaded the files, my iCloud account (basic free account) says that I'm out of space. I have the normal 5GB of space that everyone has for free, and both of my devices together were normally taking up about 1.8GB total. After the warning, I checked, and my backup is now 3.2 gigs larger. I checked the AudioShare file size, and it is really small for some reason (like 12MB). It appears that AudioShare is not reporting the size properly to the OS.
I did further checking, and it seems that it won't report the proper size unless all of the files are moved to the iTunes File Sharing folder within AudioShare. It seems that this is by design, to allow for sharing of files between Jonatan's other applications. (at least that's what I suspect is going on). So, I went to the iCloud "Manage Storage" area for my phone, and turned off the option to back up anything from AudioShare. This didn't fix anything. The size hasn't been reduced at all. It appears that there is a problem with either AudioShare not reporting its full size properly, or iOS not reducing the size of the backup when turning AudioShare off in the iCloud backups area. I've never noticed this before, because I haven't tried installing 10GB of loops and samples into AudioShare before.
Has anyone else experienced this or know what the problem/solution is? I emailed Jonatan, but I haven't heard back from him yet.
Thanks a million in advance!!!
Comments
I suggest 'skipping' copying files to 'iCloud' and use the AudioShare Wifi-Drive for transferring files.
There is great confusions between 'iCloud' and 'iCloud Drive'.
'iCloud' is the 'cloud storage' while 'iCloud Drive' is the method of using the iOS Document-Picker to access the files where ever they are stored. There is no need to use 'iCloud' in order to be able to use the 'iCloud Drive' feature.
Apps that act as 'iOS Fileprovider' (Audioshare does this) store the files in 'containers' that are normally not visible and end up under the generic 'other' category so they are backed up when syncing the iOS Device.
I've got roughly 2,5GGB of sounds stored in AudioShare...
Thanks for responding @Samu !! I'm actually uploading the files through AudioShare's built-in WiFi....directly to AudioShare. It was the next day after I uploaded the files that my iCloud usage started complaining. But, to be clear, the files never touched anything to do with iCloud, until the nightly backup. I then turned off the backup for AudioShare, but still have the problem...
BTW, @Samu, you said: Apps that act as 'iOS Fileprovider' (Audioshare does this) store the files in 'containers' that are normally not visible and end up under the generic 'other' category so they are backed up when syncing the iOS Device.
This appears to be exactly what's happening to me. But I can't find a way to stop my iCloud backups from being the size of the files that I currently have stored in AudioShare--even when they are "turned off" from backing up.
Ahh, Ok, I don't use iCloud for device-backups as the free 5GB would not cover even one of my iOS devices.
(I'm old school and sync it with iTunes at semi-regular intervals and prior to iOS updates).
Yeah, I can understand. I'd just like to figure out the problem and fix it. :-)
AudioShare and AUM share the 'container' so that might cause the backup to happen even if it's turned of for AudioShare. ie. AUM is still backed up...
Hmmm.... But AUM has always been turned off. In fact, there were only a couple of apps turned on...
This brings up a few questions. What happens when you delete AUM or AudioShare. Do the audio files stay on the device in the container? Does it matter which app was used to create the file? Say record with AUM vs import using AudioShare. If you delete both apps are they gone? Or does the container stay even if no 'owner' apps are left? Is there any way to manage this 'other' space using itunes on a computer (there doesn't seem to be any way to do it on the iPhone directly)? If one had AUM installed and made recordings then later added AudioShare, are all the files in one container, or split up because of their different creation scenarios?
@j_liljedahl Inquiring minds want to know!
My understanding is that things are stored in AudioShare as the shared central location. I'm willing to bet if I deleted AudioShare, all of the files and shared space would be freed. But I'm reluctant to do that, because it took a long time to get the files installed. I want to wait until I hear back from Jonatan before trying that.
Considering how 'Gadget' uses the private shared storage container (to share Module and iM1 sounds with Gadget) the storage container is tied to a developers apps, meaning the files remain on the device as long as one of the developers apps that use the storage container are present on the device. This is what I could 'dig out' from the developer documentations. I could have missed something though...
Good to know. Thanks @Samu !! I still haven't heard anything from Jonatan regarding my problem, which is strange. I'll keep waiting...
What is frustrating, is that iCloud shouldn't be backing it up if all of the apps are turned off (selected to not be backed up). I WOULD like to have a nightly automatic backup of a few small things, but my multi-gig loop collection is not one of those things that needs to be backed up nightly...
Sorry for not being reachable. I'm having some summer time away from work and screens
Regarding the iCloud backup. All of this is out of my reach of control, as far as I know. As pointed out, AudioShare and AUM stores the files in a shared "app group" container. This was needed for the AudioShare FileProvider extension, as well as allowing a centralized storage used by both AUM and AudioShare (and future apps as well).
Unfortunately iOS has no way of reporting the size or even the existence of those containers to the user, that's why the files there does not show up in the size of neither AudioShare or AUM. Send a feature request to Apple for this
Regarding backup, all I know here is that it does back up the files (as expected and wanted by most users), but I have no idea if it's possible for the user to opt out of specific app-group containers in the backup. Maybe not, since those containers are not listed or visible anywhere in iOS.. It would make sense if iOS turned off backup of the containers if all apps belong to its app-group had backup turned off as well. I don't know if this is the case or not. Again, feel free to ask Apple to clear this up!
Regarding file ownership, since the shared containers really are shared, they don't belong to any one of the included apps. So if you delete AudioShare but have AUM still installed, the files are kept. If you delete both apps, the files should be gone. At least this is what I found from some early experiments, but I can't guarantee this is still the case.
I too have only 5GB in my free iCloud account, and have iCloud backup completely turned off, but iCloud Drive turned on (in case I want to copy files to/from iCloud Drive manually via its built-in FileProvider, from AudioShare)
Thanks for the response @j_liljedahl !! I appreciate it!! Another (related) question, if I may: In AudioShare, there is a folder called, "iTunes File Sharing". If my loops are all in that folder, the correct iOS app file size appears to show up in the Manage Storage size section of Settings. (Note: this is not the iCloud device backup section that I reported the problem about above, but the "Manage Storage" section.) But if the files/folders are outside of that folder, the app reports as having something small, like 12MB. What is the purpose for the "iTunes File Sharing" folder, and what are the pros/cons of using it?
Also, @Samu mentioned manually backing up, rather than backing up to iCloud. What are the pros/cons of doing this? Because of the way iOS is managing these shared storage containers in iOS iCloud automatic device backups, I may need to re-assess how I do things and start doing a more manual backup, like @Samu does.
The purpose of the iTunes sharing folder is having a folder in AudioShare that can be seen and used via iTunes or other PC based software like iFunBox to transfer files to and from AudioShare. Files outside of iTunes will not be available using an iTunes based method. This can be useful if you want to transfer files between apps and AudioShare that don't have other ways of doing so.
Even if files are not in the AudioShare iTunes folder, they can be transferred to a PC system using WiFi drive inside AudioShare via your local network. Files inside the AudioShare iTunes folder can be accessed via the WiFi drive too.
You can also use the iCloud Drive (doesn't require an iCloud subscription) feature of iOS to access AudioShare files or files from Dropbox or Google Drive. Files inside the AudioShare iTunes folder are not available using iCloud Drive methods (posted screen shot adding an attachment to an email using iCloud Drive). Other differences are their transparencies to iOS and the user as @j_liljedahl discussed above.
The documents inside "iTunes File Sharing" folder can be accessed with tools like iFunBox or iTunes.
The downside is that these files can not be shared by the iOS FIleProvider...
(So no way to access these files using iCloud Drive in other apps).
I had higher hopes for iOS10 in that it might have included a system-wide feature that 'shared' all the different apps '"iTunes File Sharing" folders so that the files would have been possible to access using iCloud Drive/Document Picker. Guess we'll have to wait for either an incremental update or iOS11...
This is great information guys!!! I'm bookmarking this thread!! Thank you to all of you!!
That's right. They can also not be shared with AUM. The "iTunes File Sharing" folder is outside the shared app-group container, that's also why files therein shows up in the app storage usage report in Settings.
BTW, accessing AudioShare in other apps such as shown earlier in this thread has nothing to do with iCloud Drive. It's just that iCloud Drive is the default "Location" (FileProvider) of the DocumentPicker in iOS, and also the only one that comes built into iOS.
We need to up the profile of DocumentPicker, some sort of multicolored cartoon mascot...
If you want to see how much you have in Audioshare, click on the "I" top left corner and It will show how many GBs of samples you got on, I have 19GB on 6gb iPad.
The 12MB is size of the app.
BTW, I've resolved the problem. For those who are curious, here's what I did:
For some reason, known only to Apple, once the files are in the backup, they don't get removed with future backups, even if the samples are moved to the "iTunes File Sharing" folder. The backup must be deleted, and then the AudioShare backup option must be turned off before the next backup takes place. Once this is done, everything seems to work properly.
Thanks to everyone who tried to help with this!! Hopefully this thread will help another in the future.