As a result, we can’t – and shouldn’t try to – guess the directory where our app is installed, and instead need to rely on Apple’s API for finding our app’s documents directory. There is a catch – isn’t there always? – and it’s that all iOS apps are sandboxed, which means they run in their own container with a hard to guess directory name.

Files here are automatically synchronized with iCloud backups, so if the user gets a new device then our data will be restored along with all the other system data – we don’t even need to think about it. Fortunately, iOS makes it very easy to read and write data from device storage, and in fact all apps get a directory for storing any kind of documents we want. In this app we’re going to be letting users create as much data as they want, which means we want a better storage solution than just throwing things into UserDefaults and hoping for the best. However, it’s generally not a great place to store data, particularly if you think you’ll start storing more in the future. Previously we looked at how to read and write data to UserDefaults, which works great for user settings or small amounts of JSON.

Saved documents on iphone