iPad/iPhone – The “Open In” Menu Limitation
On Saturday I uploaded a file to my Dropbox from my Mac. The next morning, whilst out with Meyer (our dog), I wanted to review and edit said file so I opened the Dropbox app on my iPhone and tapped on the file to open it.
Dropbox opens files in read-only mode and as I wanted to edit the file, I tapped the “Open In” icon at the bottom right of the screen.
This displays a list of installed apps that can open/edit the file (this list differs depending upon the type of file selected). The app that I wanted to use, which I knew was installed on the iPhone, was not listed.
I checked the settings and preferences for both Dropbox and the app in question but there was nothing that I could configure that was related to my issue.
I mentioned it to Elaine and she checked her iPhone and iPad and asked how many apps I had listed. I had 10 apps listed in the Open In list, the same as she did.
After doing some digging around forums, I found the answer. The Open In list on both the iPad and iPhone is limited to displaying 10 apps. There is no logic as to which are displayed, but I suspect that it’s based on most recently installed. The answer that was suggested by others in the forums was to uninstall apps one at a time until the desired app appeared and then re-install the apps you had uninstalled.
However, I see two problems with this – one is that as you re-install apps they will be added back to the Open In menu and the app you really want on the menu will be “pushed off” and the other is that because apps have to run in their own sandbox, when you uninstall an app, any data that is stored “inside” the app will be deleted from the iDevice.
There was unfortunately, no solution to my problem. I had to wait until I returned home to edit my document on my Mac.
