I presume this is a limitation in iOS/the Files.app?
Over in Files.app, when trying to view a RTF file from DTTG (that otherwise opens just fine inside DTTG), as soon as I tap on the RTF, it opens the Google Drive app (that I have also added as a location inside Files.app) – presumably since Files.app wants Google Drive to open it?
It doesn’t open the file, by the way - I simply land on the main page of my Google Drive, with the latter having been opened as a new application.
Just want to confirm that I understand the above process/limitations, and am not missing something obvious.
It’s not necessarily a limitation. Files app is intended to allow users to open files in multiple applications simultaneously. It will open the file in whatever applications iOS has been told about as editors/viewers for that file type. If you press a file icon, iOS will attempt to open it with the first such editor/viewer in its list. (Unfortunately, unlike Finder on macOS, end users have no control over which apps are on the list and which one is the first one on the list – Apple need to fix that.)
If you specifically want to open the file in an app you choose, then use Select and then Share in the Files app.
But Files app is not a substitute for DEVONthink to Go or any app – it is a service to make sharing easier. If you specifically want to work with your files in DEVONthink to Go, then open DEVONthink to Go and use it to access your documents.
Federico Viticci and Frasier Spiers had a chat about this in their Canvas podcast (Ep 45; 18:29 onwards) on the Files.app - seems they received a lot of queries about Google Drive being triggered each time certain file types were selected inside Files.app.
Federico did some querying, came back that it was a problem with Google Drive, that had set up the UTI of Google Drive to “public.data”, which meant that iOS was treating Google Drive as the “owner” of just about everything (given how “public.data” is the catch-all descriptor) inside Files.app… This saw GD opening all sorts of files, unless a different app had specifically claimed ownership of that file type (e.g. Pages ‘owns’ .pages files)… including basic text files etc.
It still appears to be happening over here, with some of the text files from different apps (including DTTG2), but at least it is now more clear as to why this is happening.
Hopefully this will be fixed soon through an update.
This google drive Stuff is a real frustration! I sure hope Apple refines the API to reduce this kind of thing and a Google modifies their implementation of it to be a bit less possessive!