Re: App unable to import files in iOS13

Did you get to the bottom of this? I also have an app that exports UTIs, but on iOS 13 when opening an appropriate url Safari uselessly offers to download the file rather than offering the usual "Open with" dialog.

It sounds like a similar problem.

Are you sure it's not buried deep in the share window? There's a Manage ... on the bottom that hids a ton of stuff. It's really a lot more cluttered now despite having the redesign.

Subscribing the thread for facing the same annoying issue. In the meantime I'll have to resort to the UIDocumentPickerViewController trick too (@cfc good call on this). More development time wasted to have a degraded app functionality.. and I foresee user complaints. Gosh, I'd better say nothing.

BTW I also filed a report a few days ago, but the bug has really been around since June. I had hoped that they could realize by themselves due to how blatant it is.

Let's strongly hope they don't release GM with such a shameful bug.

Meta question: are you submitting your reports to the "Feedback Assistant"? Is the "FB"-prefixed ID supposed to be the radar ID? I still see looong IDs in openradar.

Does not seem to be fixed in beta 3

confirmed still not fixed in 13.1 beta 3.  I've submitted feedback indicating that this is SHOWSTOPPER bug!

Also, it does not require another app to be registered for same UTI.

Interestingly, PDF files now seem to work.  I get a list of PDF apps when I try to open a PDF attachment.  Even AirDrop works with PDFs.  Not with my files nor some others I've tried.

Same here. Perhaps helpful: I have a ton of apps installed being able to handle GPX files, but none shows up via 'copy to'.

We solved it by re-adding all the file definitions in our App-Info.plist file by using Apples documentation and the Xcode Project Editor (In Xcode click on the project item at the top of the file tree. Then click on the tab "Info".) We used for that an iPhone SE with the newest iOS 13 beta and Xcode 11 GM (11A420a).

The manual:

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/qa/qa1587/_index.html

(See also the troubleshooting tips at the bottom.)

The result in the plist file looks like this:

Again, still not fixed in beta 4.

Looks like this is a big problem for many apps

Public iOS 13.1 seems to have the same problem to me. I added bug to Apple as well on this.

Hi there, managed to fix the problem for me.

Adding public.data value to the UTTypeConformsTo key did the trick.

<key>UTTypeConformsTo</key>

            <array>

                <string>public.data</string>

            </array>

I managed to get the app displayed in the share menu, but after I select that option, my app isn't opened nor it produces any error, I'm just redirected to the home screen.

This is even worse.

No joy with 13.1.1

Same here, this is the situation:

Safari click on file (es. mail attachment):

     IOS 12: straight to open file screen

     IOS 13: downloads the file somewhere, interface is not clear, but when you figure out and find where to click you proceed to open file screen

Safari open file:

     IOS 12: display screen with my custom UTI Type name and "open file with MyApp" button, on click opens the app correctly

     IOS 13: display screen with the description of my custom UTI Type name, no buttons, look like it's broken. Need to look at the top for the share icon

Share dialog:

     IOS 12: no problem

     IOS 13: need to add (that i already had), i have a custom file, so no concurrent apps

          <key>UTTypeConformsTo</key>

            <array>

                <string>public.data</string>

            </array>

On "Copy to MyApp" click

     IOS 12: Opens app at the proper screen with file loaded

     IOS 13: Safari crashes, doesn't open the app, scroll to the frist ios screen

Looks like a fail on every side, how can this have been missed? or is there a documentation to apply the proper fixes?

The UX on IOS13 (even if it worked) is a 10 years step back in user experience on the import flow, i hope it's not intended.

I seem to have finally got it to work with iOS 13.1.1 by setting LSSupportsOpeningDocumentsInPlace to false - there's other apps installed on my device that can handle the same file but my app pops up in the share sheet and can open the file.

iOS 13.1.2 still no joy.

when will they fix this issue on iOS13?  "Uninstalling all but one of the apps that can import GPX" works, but it is not elegant....

iPhone Beta13.2 - nope.

We are waiting on a response on this issue as we too import gpx and MBTile. Hopefully this gets resolved soon. From what we see it is totally random in that we can delete and reinstall the app and get different results. Sometimes we will show up as an import option, sometimes we won’t but if imported into Files first then sometimes we will show up in there and sometimes not. Only work around we found is to compress (.zip) the file then we show up and it can be imported. From the looks of it a fair number of gps apps are having this issue as I have them loaded and they no longer show up as an option. We’re not alone Apple. Kill this bug! Damian LEADNAV GPS

The problem is still present for me on iOS 13.1.2. My app has support for 5 different file types. Some work fine, others don't show up in the menu, even though all are specified in similar ways in the info.plist. For GPX files, if you open the file from Mail, then the app does not show up in the menu, but numerous other apps do. But if you transfer the file through AirDrop, then I don't get a menu at all. Instead, a popup comes up saying that "This file type needs an app from the App Store".

I have logged a bug report as well. I strongly suggest everybody to do so, to put pressure on Apple to fix this. This is a major, major bug which disables important functionality in apps.

I had the same issue with my app, not released yet. My mistake was that I registered the gpx type as my own. For the Types property, I had "com.myappname.gpx". Same for Identifier. This told IOS that I have invented the gpx format and it should be registered as my app's. That was completely wrong.

In fact, the gpx is an xml format. So, for me, the solution was to set the "Types" property to public.xml and the "Conforms To" property to public.text. Now my app appears in the Share menu, as Copy to AppName, and the gpx file opens properly. My app is kind of hidden under the More button, but it's there. After setting it as favorite, it's on the first page, but that's the user preference.

In my rookie mind, that would explain why everything depends on the order of installation of the apps. If all the apps register themselves as the creator of the format, the app that was installed last will work, while the others will not. If we all register our apps as opening public formats, the isuue would disappear. In theory. Not tested enough.

iOS13.2 and xcode 11.2 still not working

This is how I got it to work for me. For the file type I just made an abitrary extension to the file I was saving as an email attachment:  filename.anyuniqueextension

Under Document Types I left the default value of "Damian-s.${PRODUCT_NAME:rfc1034identifier}"

Then under "UTTypeTagSpecification" change Item 0 to "anyuniqueextension"

Make sure in your app that you read and write the file extension with "anyuniqueextension"  

All of my file types are .plist.

I've solved this in may app by replacing custom UTIs with system defined ones. I used them in Info.plist in the "Document types" section and removed all exported UTIs. Now my app is back in the list of available apps.

You can get UTI for a file by using this command in Terminal (God bless Wikipedia :-)):

mdls -name kMDItemContentType -name kMDItemContentTypeTree -name kMDItemKind FILE

For GPX files the UTI is "com.apple.dt.document.gpx". Corresponing record in Info.plist should look like this:

    <dict>
        <key>CFBundleTypeIconFiles</key>
        <array/>
        <key>CFBundleTypeName</key>
        <string>GPX record</string>
        <key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
        <string>Editor</string>
        <key>LSHandlerRank</key>
        <string>Owner</string>
        <key>LSItemContentTypes</key>
        <array>
            <string>com.apple.dt.document.gpx</string>
        </array>
    </dict>

I finally solved this problem for custom UTIs. First a little background. Our apps have two or three custom file types. They have been in the apps for at least five years and have always worked fine. After upgrading to iOS 13, users could no longer import their files from any source.

After trying many suggestions in this thread, I finally decided to delete the entire "Exported Type UTIs" and "Imported Type UTIs" keys from the info.plist for each app. Note that I used the property list view for all changes, not the source view. Next, I went to the target info tab and created new Exported UTIs and Imported UTIs. The identifier for each UTI was the same as before, which was the reverse company domain and the custom file extention (com.company.ext). The "conforms to" field was set to "public.data" for all. In the "additional properties" area, I added the UTTypeTagSpecification key as a dictionary and added the "public.filename-extension" key as an array. In the array I added one item which was the file extention.

UTTypeTagSpecification               Dictionary

     public.filename-extension        Array

          Item 0                                  String                ext

Prior to these changes,  I was working with the plist source to try to solve this problem. But apparently using the property gui editor changed the plist source in a way that resolved the problem. I only did a quick compare of the old file and the new and didn't see anything obvious.

Also, note that I did not make any changes to the Document Types.

Is there a way to reproduce the issue reliably.

I mean make a working device have the bug.

Because a lot of solutions seem to come down to the reinstalling step updating the system list until another app update make it fails again.

Hi, I have had this problem exporting GPX files from Gaia to Outdooractive up to 13.2. OA would not show up in the list of suggested apps. So I deleted a lot of apps that had shown up instead: Threema, Telegram, LinkedIn, DropBox, Google Drive, Komoot, Motion Control X GPS, ... Now I have only three GPS apps (which create GPX filed and can import them). Gaia, Outdooractive, Alpenvereinaktiv. Cheers

Many users report, importing GPX-files works again with iOS 13.2 - exactly like it was with iOS 12! To me, it feels like it's the majority.

BUT there are other users with 13.2 still having the same issues. Can anybody confirm this?

I fixed this by adjusting some settings in the app's Info.plist.

I switched UISupportsDocumentBrowser to false, and added LSSupportsOpeningDocumentsInPlace, also set to false.

I would be super happy if somebody has a working config and could post it here.

Are you guys using the Document Types? Or the Imported UTIs?

For me it was working for a while, but now with no change to my code it's not working any more.

And what's also super strange. Even the filepicker is not displaying gpx files correctly.

UIDocumentPickerViewController(documentTypes: ["public.xml", "com.topografix.gpx"], in: .import)

This used to properly highlight all gpx files for me. Now it's not any more.

Our users are really frustrated but we have no idea how to solve the problem.

So any hint on how you guys got it working is extremly appreciated!!!

I was facing a similar issue. My app wasn't being shown in the list of apps to open the XML attachment from the mail app. I used this code in info.plist and it worked for me:

<key>CFBundleDocumentTypes</key>
  <array>
  <dict>
  <key>CFBundleTypeName</key>
  <string>XML File</string>
  <key>LSHandlerRank</key>
  <string>Default</string>
  <key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
  <string>Viewer</string>
  <key>LSItemContentTypes</key>
  <array>
  <string>public.XML</string>
  </array>
  <key>CFBundleTypeIconFiles</key>
  <array>
  <string>Sandbox-icon.png</string>
  </array>
  </dict>
  </array>

Refer: http://iosdevelopertips.com/core-services/how-to-register-file-types-supported-by-an-ios-app.html

I too am hit by this issue.

I have my own custom UTI for my own files which I serve from a web page.

in iOS 12, Safari puts up "Open in.." when tapping it. Choosing Open in copies the file into my apps Documents dir in a special Inbox subdriectory, where I can read it via the URL. If I use the UIDocumentPickerViewController way , it says "Copy to [my app]", which again puts it in the Inbox.

in iOS 13, it demands to be downloaded instead. Trying to read the downloaded file results in it not being owned by my app and illegible. In fact, I can't figure out what anyone can do with the download's file:// URL that is given to the app in that situation. If I go to the Download part of Files and move (copy really) it into my app's Document dir, it's found.

I've tried a great number of the techniques mentioned, but the truth is: works in iOS 12 perfectly, decides it wants to use the new file system in iOS 13, but still doesn't give access.

Should be fixed in iOS 13.3. Two apps using different UTIs for an extension can both show up in the list now. Just need to ensure that the Conforms To field is set.

i has the error when import files, how solves ?

2019-12-27 09:34:05.110894+0800 Happy3D[357:24297] *** Assertion failure in -[UIApplication _applicationOpenURLAction:payload:origin:], /BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/UIKitCore/UIKit-3698.140/UIApplication.m:6857

2019-12-27 09:34:05.150198+0800 Happy3D[357:24297] invalid mode 'kCFRunLoopCommonModes' provided to CFRunLoopRunSpecific - break on _CFRunLoopError_RunCalledWithInvalidMode to debug. This message will only appear once per execution.

libc++abi.dylib: terminate_handler unexpectedly threw an exception

my inffo.list

<key>CFBundleDocumentTypes</key>

  <array>

  <dict>

  <key>CFBundleTypeIconFiles</key>

  <array>

  </array>

  <key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>

  <string>Editor</string>

  <key>LSHandlerRank</key>

  <string>Owner</string>

  <key>CFBundleTypeName</key>

  <string>stl file</string>

  <key>LSItemContentTypes</key>

  <array>

  <string>public.standard-tesselated-geometry-format</string>

  </array>

  </dict>

  </array>

my xcode is 11.3,my pad ios is 12.4.4

Does anyone have an update with this issue? It seems to persist on IOS13.4.

We had today a similar case that it was not working anymore on iOS 13.4. The gpx file was flagged with the icon of our app, but the "copy into app" menu entry was missing. A restart of the smartphone did solve it.