Passcode never works; File browsing is extremely basic – My Cloud Home Review

UPDATE FOR July 18, 2019 (v2.9.3, 2-Stars, iPhone XS, iOS 12.3.1): New app is certainly better than the old one. Passcode feature seems more secure, and I can appreciate the change to the iPhone’s native video player. Still think there needs to be improvements for searching and sorting files, as well as the ability to view a folder of images as tiles. Also think more parametric data needs to be shown. At the minimum I would expect date created, date added, date modified, etc. (standard Windows Explorer or Mac Finder column options). Options for additional metadata for folders of picture and video media, such as resolution, camera model, frames per second, etc. would be a real bonus. I also still think that a carry-over or comments and tags added to a file via Mac Finder should be stored on the drive and integrated into this app. After all, the My Cloud Home is heavily marketed as a Mac compatible backup solution. I expect all the time I spend commenting and tagging my media to be preserved should my original file be lost. Please consider keeping folders on the top of a list when sorting within a folder containing sub-folders, as well as an abundance of individual files. User shouldn’t have to scroll through all their files to navigate to the next sub-folder. There is an inconvenience I think needs to be addressed. Say I want to save many images or videos consecutively to the Camera Roll. Firstly, I believe there should be an option to select multiple items or bulk select the entire folder, rather than having to swipe right on each picture and select the save option. Worse yet, when I’ve swiped to and downloaded the last picture I am not able to press the ‘X’ in the top left of the screen because of the many status updates from the “Save to Camera Roll” operations. Would be cleaner if status updates would condensed into one, rather than showing up individually for each item saved (ex. “Saving Item 2 of 3, 23% complete”). Either way the updates shouldn’t prevent the user from closing out the picture viewing window. One final idea that would be a real plus would be the ability to browse unencrypted Time Machine backups. This would prevent me from having to use both Apple Time Machine and WD’s Folder Sync option. I’m convinced that this two functions running simultaneously causes issues. Another great option would be allowing the user to select files or folders to be stored locally on the device, and be available for viewing offline. ORIGINAL REVIEW April 2019 (v2.0.3, 1-Stars, iPhone XS, iOS unknown): The passcode feature always disables itself... terrible. What’s the point of a passcode if it chooses when to work? Other improvements I think are necessary: - Video player needs to be revamped. I recommend just utilizing the same player as a full screen video in Safari since this is what iPhone users are used to. Live scrubbing and skip forward/back 15 seconds are necessary. - More ways to search and filter files... it’s a backup drive, with thousands of files. We need more parametric data linked to each file (carry-over of comments and tags from Mac finder would be nice...). Name, size, data as the only sort options is pretty basic (what is “date” anyways...? Date added? Last opened? Created?) - Why can I not view just one folder in tile view? Currently the user can only see all pic/video files in tile view mode. Did they think people were going to buy 8TB+ drives for a handful of files..? Basically I think the app needs to resemble closer to Mac Finder or Windows Explorer. Use Apple provided functions where possible. It’s an iPhone app, it should feel like one.
Review by Mattl121212 on My Cloud Home.