Way to designate records not to be kept in iCloud

[ArsAstronautica]

Currently I have all my TF data in iCloud, which is working very well!

I am thinking about cataloging a manuscript collection and using TF to do it, since it would be the most useful tool to do so in. Now this collection will result in a database potentially larger than I want for it to be in iCloud. I am wondering if there is a way to select a set of records/forms not to be kept in iCloud. I know I can turn off iCloud, but that’s not what I mean. Some data in iCloud, some not. There currently does not seem to be a good way to do that.

And no, this is not really a feature request.

[Brendan]

Hi Ars,

The only way I can think of to let you do this is that you could create 2 separate areas for storing your database.

Right now by default Tap Forms stores its database in this folder:

~/Library/Containers/com.tapforms.mac

You could possibly create another folder called:

~/Library/Containers/com.tapforms.mac-personal

Then when you wanted to switch between them, you would have to rename the personal one to be the same as the default and rename the default to something else.

I know it’s not ideal, but that’s the only thing I can think of that might do what you want.

If you were to download the demo version from my website and launch that you would see that it has a completely different set of data than your main database. That’s because it stores its database here:

~/Library/Containers/com.tapforms.mac-demo

So with a bit of folder renaming you might be able to achieve what you want.

Thanks!

Brendan

[ArsAstronautica]

Hmm. Not a bad idea. I can write a small shell script to swap the two.

Only question is, is the “Use iCloud setting” stored there in that folder? I’d rather not confuse TF trying to sync two different DBs!

BTW, I may just store the records in iCloud any way. I’ll see how large the files actually get.

[Brendan]

Hi Ars,

If you look in the ~/Library/Containers/com.tapforms.mac/Data/Library/Preferences folder you’ll see a file called com.tapforms.mac.plist

That’s the defaults database. When you enable iCloud Sync, Tap Forms sets a value which eventually gets written to that file:

icloud-enabled

So if you swap out the ~/Library/Containers/com.tapforms.mac folder, then you’ll get a whole new set of settings. So you should be fine with that.

It would be kind of neat if I could swap out that folder from within Tap Forms, say via an “Accounts” menu item or something. But I don’t think sandbox rules would let me do that. Plus the app would have to be quit and re-launched in between to load in the new defaults database.

Thanks!

Brendan

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