Hi,
I recently had to reinstall Nomad Sculpt on my iPad and unfortunately lost all of my projects that were stored inside the app. After reading this forum, I understand that this is due to the way iOS handles app deletion and that Nomad itself is not necessarily at fault.
However, as a user coming from apps like Procreate, I was surprised that deleting the app also removed all saved projects. It made me wonder:
Has there ever been any discussion about adding an optional automatic backup system, for example to iCloud Drive, or an option to store projects outside of the app sandbox?
I imagine this could help prevent accidental data loss for users who are not familiar with how iOS handles app data.
I would be interested to hear what other users think and whether this is something that might be considered for a future version.
Thank you for creating such a great app. Despite losing my work, I really enjoy using Nomad Sculpt!
Best regards,
Margriet
You can already use another folder (nomad menu, top left icon)
Thanks, when I do this, will the files still be there if I delete the app?
There is one thing - never unistall / delete nomad - it doesn’t help - neither fixing a bug
If you think it helped then it’s because a reinstall also resets the settings - but you can also reset everything manually …
Backup your files / alphas / materials
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I just hope the developer will build in an option, that the project files are stored in another place, so when you delete the app, those files will be stored. I am not the first one, who deleted it and I will not be the last one.
One thing I’m genuinely curious about: why did you delete or uninstall the app in the first place?
I’ve been using nomad for years, and during that time I’ve never had a single reason to uninstall it. That’s why I’m always a bit surprised when people do that, and I wonder what they hope to achieve by it.
In many cases, you can simply reset the app if something isn’t working properly, without having to delete or reinstall it at all.
Just wondering — what made you decide to uninstall it?
I guess project files keep stored inside nomad folder.
But it’s the same in procreate, and most creative apps except some of adobe one.
Yes, problem solved.
You can also select a folder in your iCloud drive, but Nomad might be slow to start if they are lot of unsynced files in that case.
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Thank you Stephomi, that worked!
However, I would still love to see an option to store only the project files in iCloud Drive or another user-accessible location. At the moment, it seems that all Nomad files are stored together, while I would prefer a simple project folder containing only my .nom files.
Thank you for the great app, and I hope this feature might be considered in the future.
I uninstalled Nomad because I suddenly could no longer rotate any object. At first, I thought there was something wrong with the model I was working on, but then I realized that I couldn’t rotate any objects at all, including newly created ones.
Before uninstalling, I tried closing and reopening Nomad, closing all apps running on my iPad, and restarting the iPad. Unfortunately, none of those steps solved the problem.
Since I couldn’t find the cause and was unable to work any further, I assumed something in the app had become corrupted and thought that reinstalling Nomad might fix it. As a relatively new Nomad user, I simply didn’t know that there might be other ways to reset or troubleshoot the app without uninstalling it.
It shouldn’t be an issue, you just have an extra folder indirection (Nomad/projects).
(just make sure to not select the iCloud root as a Nomad folder, otherwise Nomad will spam all its subfolder inside it).
I understand that creating a dedicated folder in iCloud solves the problem, and that is what I have done now.
My point is more about new users. If Nomad would ask during installation where projects should be stored (local storage or iCloud), many users would automatically choose the safer option.
The reason I started this topic is that I lost my projects after uninstalling the app. After reading the forum, I discovered that I was not the only one. For experienced users this may be obvious, but for new users it is not always clear that deleting the app can also delete all projects stored inside it.
That is why I think an initial setup question or a reminder about project storage could help prevent accidental data loss.
IMHO the whole saving a project thing is a bit twisted. I had never noticed the Export as Nomad before reading this thread. Call me crazy, but in about 40 years of working with software, I have never seen an app “export” it’s native format. That is normally under Save and everything else is Export. I sort of get the logic, but it is a bit strange. And now that I know it is there, great.
That’s because you compare it against desktop apps.
Mobile apps usually save files internally, and then you got the export/share for external use.
Procreate put their own “procreate” format at the same level as obj/usdz.
You are exactly correct. One of the things I still have an issue with is how android has managed to lock up the file system. Would love to hear the logic behind that. Like: “the person who owns the device cannot be trusted to manipulate files.” ??? Oh well, nothing to get my undies in a knot over.
Before on Android, any apps could read other apps user folder.
Same as desktop… My guess is that it was a rushed design compared to iOS back then.
Desktop design overall is an obvious security issue (still today, even for MacOS, it’s just that moving desktop to sandboxing is going to take ages, if it’s going to ever happen).
For example for the desktop version of Nomad I wanted it to be sandboxed but encountered 2 possible issues:
- I include QuadRemesher that is not sandboxed itself so I couldn’t do it
- more importantly sandboxing doesn’t work well with user-plugins, even though I don’t support plugins yet maybe I will in the future so I prefer to keep it safe
(the first beta version were sandboxed actually)
Android is now sandboxed but the issue is that they treat the “user” the same as “any apps”.
Very frustrating… iOS is much more sound in that regards, the developer choose if the user can browse the files. Usually it’s done well (creatives/business app do it, other apps don’t).
