There is a powerful set of File Management features accessible by pressing the Actions button in a file list view. You can create new folders, and rename/copy/move/delete existing files and folders. You can compress multiple files and folders into .zip archives, and you can unzip .zip archives. You can also send files via e-mail from GoodReader (iPhone OS 3.0 required). You can mark files as read/unread, set/remove a password protection for individual files/folders, set/remove a star for a file or folder, extract files from PDF Portfolios, save a text from clipboard as a new TXT file for further reading, create a task in Appigo Todo app, and copy special URL links to clipboard to allow other application to easily launch GoodReader and open a particular file.
Find Files
Although it's not the part of Actions menu, we though that we still should mention this feature here. Use it to quickly locate files and folders in one of four modes - by a file name match, recently read, recently added, starred. You can access this feature by pressing this button in the main file list view:
You can change the meaning or the word recently when finding files in recently read and recently added modes. This is done in Application Settings, General section. Possible values are: 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month.
Tips for Managing Files and Sending E-mail using Actions menu
- press Done button at the top of the screen to exit Actions mode and to hide File Management buttons
- press ">>" and "<<" buttons to see action buttons that are currently hidden
- most of File Management actions require selecting files/folders. Select or deselect files/folders by tapping them. Select All and Deselect All buttons are there to help you with this. Selected files are marked with green dot.
- use New Folder button to create a new folder
- use Delete button to delete all selected files/folders (be careful - this can't be undone)
- use Rename button to rename single selected file or folder
- use Copy button to prepare selected files/folders for copying and Cut (Move) button to prepare selected files/folders for moving. Use Cancel button to cancel copying/moving operation. To proceed with the copying/moving, you must exit the Actions mode by pressing Done button, go inside the destination folder, press Actions button again (while you're inside the destination folder), and then press Paste button.
- use Zip button to compress multiple files and folders into .zip archives. If any protected item was put into archive, this archive will also be protected.
- use Unzip button to extract existing .zip archives
- use E-Mail button to send selected files as e-mail attachments (iPhone OS 3.0 or later required). Folders can't be e-mailed. There's a limit for a total size of files that can be sent in a single message (for the current version of iPhone OS this limit is something like 9Mb, your outgoing mail server may provide additional limitations).
- use New File button to create a new TXT files with textual contents of system clipboard (iPhone OS 3.0 or later required). This feature is useful for comfortable offline reading of pure text copied from some other app (Safari, for example).
- use MarkRead and MarkUnread buttons to mark files and folders as read or unread. Read and unread files are distinguished by title's color - read files are shown in black, unread - in blue. Opening a file for reading or visiting a folder in normal (non-action) mode automatically marks it as read. You can see the list of recently read files using Find Files feature in Recently Read mode.
- use Starred and Non-Starred buttons to visually mark/unmark files and folders with a star. To toggle a star for a single file or folder you can simply tap the star icon in Actions mode. You can quickly see the list of all starred files and folders using Find Files feature in Starred mode.
- use Protect and Unprotect buttons to set/remove a password protection on individual files and folders. When trying to open protected files or folders you will be asked to enter a password (it must be previously set in Application Settings, General section). All protected files and folders share the same password, but this password is different from application startup password. Once you enter this password, GoodReader enters the private mode. It means that you can freely open protected files and folders until you quit GoodReader. You can see a small lock icon at the left bottom corner when you're in the private mode. The contents of protected folders is accessible via WiFi and via Find Files feature only if you in the private mode. Also you're not allowed to copy or cut protected files and folders that contain protected files, if you're not in the private mode. Please note that this is a very simple security measure, no actual encryption is performed on your files. Be careful not to forget your password, because no way of retrieving or resetting this password is provided.
- use PDFPortfolio button to extract all files embedded into a PDF Portfolio container file. GoodReader supports PDF Portfolios, but not for a direct reading, like it happens in Adobe Acrobat 9 or later. PDF Portfolios are complex PDF files with a very simple first page (usually it says something like "This file can be opened with Adobe Acrobat 9"), and a set of many PDF files embedded into this file, which is used simply as a container for other PDF files. GoodReader lets you extract those files from a PDF Portfolio for further reading them as normal PDF files. Due to a specific technology used for this extraction, every file must be fully loaded into memory before extraction, so very large embedded files will not be extracted.
- GoodReader offers integration with a very popular high quality to-do app called Appigo Todo (requires a separate purchase and installation). Select a file and use Todo Task button to instantly create a task in Appigo Todo. Then, while viewing the task in Todo, you can click the action button (the GoodReader logo) and Todo will start GoodReader and open the file associated with this task.
- use Link button to copy a special URL link of a single selected file to clipboard (iPhone OS 3.0 or later required). This URL link will have a special prefix gropen:// and will contain a full internal path to a selected file inside GoodReader's file storage. Any other iPhone application that is capable of opening URL links (for example, todo-type app like Todo or OmniFocus or notebook-type app) can use this URL link to automatically launch GoodReader and open a file being linked. For example, you can create a "Read this book" todo task in a todo application and associate an URL link with this task in such a way that tapping this URL link in that other application will launch GoodReader and open this file of interest. If you invoke the Link action with several selected files, several URL links separated by line-breaks will be copied to clipboard.