Google Drive Retirement
On March 25, 2019 March 7, 2019, Google will disable the APIs that forScore relies on to offer Google Drive upload and download support directly from within our app’s Services panel. As a result, the Google Drive service will stop functioning and we will be removing it entirely with a future update. We realize that this change will affect many of our customers, so we wanted to take a few minutes today to explain what’s happening and why we’ve chosen to end support for this service rather than update to Google’s replacement APIs.
In short, continuing to support Google Drive requires that we either sacrifice your privacy and our app’s stability by relying on third-party code, or that we spend a disproportionate amount of time and resources developing a custom solution of our own. We’ve never maintained user accounts and we believe that protecting your privacy is best done by never collecting any of your information in the first place, so the former choice isn’t one we’d even consider.
The latter choice is a tough sell, since we’d be working for weeks or months just to try and maintain functionality that’s already duplicated on a system level (more on that below) instead of working to make forScore better for everyone. Things change quickly on iOS, and our customers are best served by our remaining nimble and responsive. That’s how we’ve supported each new iOS version and device on day one almost every time, and we plan to continue doing so whenever possible.
Fortunately, as of iOS 11, Apple’s Files app provides a better way for our users to transfer files to and from their favorite cloud storage services. Instead of relying on us to add and maintain support for individual services, each cloud storage provider can include a File Provider extension with their own app. Each service handles communication to and from their server, while Apple provides a standardized interface for all of your accounts. When you download or upload documents using “Files” in forScore’s Services panel, that system interface is what you see. Or, on an iPad, just use Slide Over to access the Files app without leaving forScore and Drag and Drop files back and forth. Learn more about the Files app and File Provider extensions here.
While we wish we could have continued to offer Google Drive alongside these new enhancements to the Files app so that our customers could shift their workflow at their own pace, we think the benefits of this system are worth the adjustment period. Learn to use this system once and you’ll be set no matter which cloud storage providers you need to work with in the future. And since providers can add File Provider extensions on their own, the services you can connect to this way are always going to vastly outnumber those we could have supported directly.
Whether you use specific services like Amazon Drive and SugarSync or rely on generic protocols like FTP and WebDAV, apps that include File Provider extensions give you a better experience in almost every way. If you’re impacted by this change and have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us here. We sincerely appreciate your understanding and continued support.