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Comment by kilolima | Hacker News Reader

You can export placemarks to a file and then use your own tools to sync. There's no reason why every single app has to include the kitchen sink.

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What's your proposed workflow? Hit "export" every time you create a bookmark? Add a weekly reminder to export?

If it regularly exported automatically, it could get picked up by a syncing app, but otherwise...

Use Syncthing or KDE Connect to sync a folder with that file between devices.

This is needlessly inconvenient and you know it

Where is "that file"? In an obscure part of the Android file system? Can I even access it without rooting my device?

Let's be honest, the average user will not do this. In fact, this comment reminds me of the infamous Dropbox one which suggested a similar failure of UX.

Saving a file is not beyond the average user.

I'm not sure about that, Google Maps and many other apps these days now autosave such that the average user today likely doesn't save anything manually anymore. But even still, I have the same question as the sibling above [0], what is the proposed workflow for saving such a file?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38748346

Autosave to file. Sync file to $backup.

I already do this with as many apps as I can.

Now if only the app itself can do this for me so that I don't have to do it myself, which was my original point.

But organic maps users will never be average users!

The average user is sticking with the default Apple or Google offerings, not looking for privacy respecting, FOSS, fully offline alternatives.

This attitude is why open source userland applications' UX is so bad. Sure, people who use them are not average, but everyone appreciates good UX, even within the constraints of being "privacy respecting, FOSS, fully offline."

I'm OK if Organic Maps isn't designed for the average ignorant user. I've been using it for over a year now and its great, don't need it ruined so a bunch of casuals can download it

This. I'm tired of creating accounts. I have my own filesystem.

I think Apple solves this pretty well in iOS… there’s pretty simple iCloud API’s apps can use to store basic data (also structured data with CKDatabase/etc) which automatically just use the user’s iCloud account storage and implicitly are synced across devices. Apps don’t have to implement any cloud storage or consensus/etc, they just use the platform API’s and everything just works. I’d be shocked if android/play store didn’t have a similar thing.

Same thing on Android, e.g., WhatsApp uses Google storage automatically for backups.

I hate the way whatsapp does it specifically because it wont let me back up to file.

Oh it does backup to file, you just have just have to backup a very weird and almost hidden folder

Huh, on Android or iOS? On Android the backup settings page offer a backup to Google Drive, it also says "Your messages will also back up to your phone's internal storage."...

On my phone the on-device backup can be found in /storage/emulated/0/Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Databases, and I remember reinstalling WhatsApp, logging in with my phone number, and it found the backup and restored the messages.

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