GoodReader offers you the ability to access different kinds of servers.
Accessing E-Mail servers to download E-Mail attachments
Accessing WebDAV servers (MobileMe iDisk, box.net or others)
Before connecting to a server, its record must be created. To create a server record, go to Web Downloads section, select Connect to Servers, go to Create New Connection section and select a server type to add. You will be asked to enter readable title of a server record (this title is what you will see in a server records list), user name and password to access this server, URL of a server (except for pre-configured servers, for which GoodReader knows their URLs), and possibly some other connection parameters, depending on a server type.
For extra security don't store a password in a server record, this way you will have to enter it manually every time when connecting.
You can always edit server record data by pressing a blue arrow to the right of server title in server records list.
You don't have to create records for local WebDAV servers on your WiFi network - they will be detected and shown automatically in most cases.
Tap a server record to connect to this server.
When connected to a general file server, you will see a list of folders and files on that server. If you tap a file's or folder's name, you will select it for further downloading or syncing. Once selected everything you need to download, press the Download button, and the downloading process will start on the background. If you need to browse inside a folder, tap a blue arrow to the right of its name. For E-Mail servers you will see headlines of messages (see details in the appropriate section).
It's ok to have several separate downloads at the same time.
Find information about your downloads in Web Downloads section.
You can upload files and folders from GoodReader to servers by pressing the Upload button and selecting local files/folders to upload. This feature is not available for E-Mail servers.
You can automatically sync files and folders located in GoodReader to their remote versions on a server. Details can be found here.
You can delete files and folders (or email messages) from a server by swiping their names (be careful - this can't be undone).
In case if network error happens, GoodReader may show you an error message instead of a server folder contents. To reload the real contents of a server folder into GoodReader's memory, press Reload button:
You have 2 options to rotate the screen - automatically or manually. Choose your option in General Settings section of Application Settings. In automatic mode screen orientation will follow the actual device movements. In manual mode (very useful for reading in bed) you can always rotate the screen manually with this button:
GoodReader can automatically sync individual files and entire folders to their remote versions hosted on online servers of the following types: MobileMe iDisk, Dropbox, SugarSync and any other WebDAV, FTP or SFTP server.
There are two different types of sync - normal sync and download-only sync. The idea of normal sync is to keep the contents of a local file or a folder identical to what you have on a server. The idea of download-only sync is a convenient distribution of frequently updated documents to a group of people.
The sync process consists of two parts: initial setup and actual synchronization.
Initial setup. Do this only once per each file/folder you wish to synchronize. Open a connection to a server, find a file or folder that you wish to sync, tap it so it becomes highlighted. The Sync button will appear at the bottom. Press it. Then select a target local folder inside GoodReader where you want this file/folder to be put. Then press the Download here & Synchronize button. This will create synchronization record in Web Downloads section and show you the parameters window where you can set various sync options. Once you're done with it, you're ready to sync. All relevant remote files will be automatically downloaded to your device when doing the very first synchronization, so there is no need to run a separate downloading process for this file/folder with the Download button.
All files and folders that are a part of the sync process are tagged with a special badge:
Actual synchronization. You do the sync by pressing the Sync button in the Web Downloads section (it's not the same Sync button that you used for initial setup). This will sync all the folders and files with all the servers that you have set up for synchronization. However, if you only want to sync one of those files/folders, you can find its sync record in the Web Downloads section and press this button:
Normal sync. During this process GoodReader analyzes the contents of both local and remote folders and does the following:
Download-only sync. This type of sync doesn't care what happens with your local files, it never puts anything on a server, never deletes anything from it, it only looks for new and modified remote files and downloads them as needed. By default, files that were deleted from a server will be deleted from your local device. However, you can prevent this from happening by resetting the Delete local files switch on the sync record parameters window.
Attention!!! When doing a normal sync, be extra careful when deleting files/folders from a synced zone, either on your device or on a server, because this will make GoodReader delete their synced counterparts during the next sync session. If you accidentally deleted such local file, do not sync, but rather open a connection to a server, find this file there and manually download it to a local folder where you accidentally deleted it from.
However, you can prevent this from happening. There are two switches available on a sync record parameters window (press a blue button to the right of a sync record to edit its parameters). These switches allow you to prohibit a deletion of local/remote files/folders whose remote/local counterparts are missing at the time of syncing.
If you modify a synced file both locally and on a server independently and then try to sync it, this will create a sync conflict, because GoodReader will not know which version of a file to choose. You can set up a policy on sync conflicts per each sync record individually. The following options are available: Ask what to do (the default option, you will be able to manually choose an appropriate action per each conflicted file individually during every sync session), Leave unresolved (leaves both files intact, allowing you to deal with this conflict later), Local files have priority (replaces remote conflicted files with local ones, making you loose remote ones forever; be careful with this option!!!), Remote files have priority (replaces local conflicted files with remote ones, making you loose local ones forever; be careful with this option!!!), Create duplicates (renames both files to avoid further conflicts, leaving you with both versions of a file everywhere - on your device and on a server; the safest option). Also, during the actual synchronization, GoodReader may sometimes offer you the Discard this conflict, files are identical conflict resolution option. Use this option to save your Internet traffic, but only if you know for sure that these files are identical.
While every effort was made to ensure data integrity in all abnormal situations (loosing Internet connection, manual process abortion, etc.), we strongly encourage you to take precautions to make sure that the sync process will not be aborted halfway. Sync process is a sensitive one, and it may result in a data loss if used inappropriately. Just keep that in mind, and everything should be fine.
Important!!! Do not modify (upload, rename, delete, etc.) your files and folders, both local and remote, while GoodReader performs the actual synchronization. Doing so may result in a damaged file being transferred and/or inconsistent file/folder structure either on your device, or on your server.
There are two ways to get your E-Mail file attachments into GoodReader - by using Apple's Document Interchange feature (you can use this feature to copy Apple's Mail app attachments into GoodReader by selecting GoodReader in the Open In... menu of the Mail app) or accessing online E-Mail servers via IMAP or POP3 protocol directly from GoodReader to find a message with a file attachment and to download such attachment into GoodReader.
This section describes the latter of two methods - accessing online IMAP and POP3 mail servers.
Please read the Read Me First introduction.
IMAP is a much more advanced protocol than POP3, and it works much faster when downloading message headlines. Please use IMAP instead of POP3 whenever possible.
GoodReader offers a set of pre-configured popular mail servers - gmail.com, yahoo.com, me.com, hotmail.com and aol.com. GoodReader knows how to access these servers. You only have to provide your user name and password.
Note for yahoo.com users: yahoo.com only offers POP3 access for their paid accounts. At the time of writing this, no IMAP or POP3 access to free yahoo.com accounts is possible.
When entering connection parameters for servers other than pre-configured ones, you will be asked to specify if a server uses SSL, and a type of authentication. Please avoid using "Password" authentication when "Use SSL" is off. By doing so you expose your password to the whole world every time you connect.
When a server uses IMAP protocol, GoodReader by default scans all messages on a server and shows you only messages with file attachments. You can change this behaviour and make GoodReader show you all the messages for IMAP servers by switching the Emails with attachments only option in Application Settings, Other Settings section.
IMAP servers: messages with attachments will be marked with a paperclip image. When you tap on such a message, you will get to the detailed view, showing you the list of all files attached to this message. Tapping on an actual attachment will select it for further downloading. Once selected everything you need to download, press the Download button, and the downloading process will start on the background.
While IMAP protocol allows to determine if a message contains file attachments while scanning for message headlines, POP3 doesn't offer such information until the actual downloading of a message has started. So, when it comes to POP3, to save your Internet traffic, we show you all the messages with a question mark, to indicate a fact that it is unknown at the moment if this message contains an attachment or not. When you tap on such a message, GoodReader will start actual downloading, and will determine if there are attachments or not.
You can access file storage and sharing servers like MobileMe iDisk, box.net or other servers on the Web that support WebDAV protocol. You can browse such servers, download, upload, sync and delete files and entire folders.
Please read the Read Me First introduction.
GoodReader offers a set of pre-configured popular WebDAV servers - MobileMe iDisk, Public iDisk, box.net. GoodReader knows the URL addresses to access these servers, so you only have to enter your user name and password for these server records. Other WebDAV servers can be accessed by creating a server record with the Any WebDAV Server link in the Create New Connection section.
The same technology lets you connect to local WebDAV servers via WiFi - connect directly (via WebDAV protocol) to any other file management and sharing application on another iPhone or iPad that is currently connected to the same WiFi network. You don't have to create records for such servers - they will be detected and shown automatically in most cases.
Note for MobileMe iDisk users: do not enter the "@me.com" part of your e-mail address in the user name field.
GoodReader offers you a server-style access to Google Docs. It allows you to browse your Google Docs account like a simple file server. You can download, upload and delete files and entire folders.
Please read the Read Me First introduction.
Google Docs usually converts certain file types (.doc, .txt, etc.) to its internal format, and then converts them back to a desired format when you want to download them (this doesn't apply to PDF files - Google always stores PDF files in an unmodified form). When you try to download such a file, GoodReader will offer you a choice of formats in which you want to download this file - PDF, TXT, DOC, HTML, PNG, RTF, ZIP (with HTML and images). Files that weren't initially converted to Google's internal format (including PDF files) will be downloaded in an unmodified form.
We offer the ability to upload files and folders to Google Docs. Recently Google announced the ability to store unmodified files of any arbitrary type, without converting them to Google's internal format. You can upload such files to your free Google Docs account from your computer using a web browser. It is also possible to upload unmodified files of unrecognized types from GoodReader. However, since we're not using a web browser for this, but Google's proprietary API, Google currently limits such an ability to its paid Premier accounts only. For free accounts Google will only accept files of recognized types from GoodReader, and will convert them to its internal format (PDF file format is an exception - Google will accept PDF files and store them in an unmodified form for free accounts as well as for paid Premier accounts). Please note that this information only applies to uploading files, downloading of unmodified files of arbitrary types is possible in GoodReader for all Google Docs accounts, including free ones. This information is valid at the time of writing. Google may change this behaviour after the release of this manual, so please consult Google documentation for more information.
When loading a file list, Google sometimes will report a partial list. In this case you will see the Load more item in a list. Consequent clicks on this item will load the rest of a list. However, it has been noted that sometimes Google reports a partial list, but further loading doesn't show any additional files or folders. This Google's behaviour is beyond our control.
When uploading files to Google Docs, it has been noted that Google sometimes reports an updated file list with a little delay. So it is possible to upload a file, and then to see an updated file list without this file. Just press the refresh button to reload a file list, and you should see a recently uploaded file. Please note that we have nothing to do with this delay in updating a current file list, it is provided by Google.
GoodReader offers you a server-style access to Dropbox. It allows you to browse your Dropbox account like a simple file server. You can download, upload, sync and delete files and entire folders.
Please read the Read Me First introduction.
GoodReader offers you a server-style access to SugarSync. It allows you to browse your SugarSync account like a simple file server. You can download, upload, sync and delete files and entire folders.
Please read the Read Me First introduction.
GoodReader offers the ability to access FTP servers. You can browse servers, download, upload, sync and delete files and entire folders. Please note that FTP protocol is insecure. Use SFTP access for confidential documents.
Please read the Read Me First introduction.
GoodReader supports FTP servers with non-Unicode national text encodings. While most modern FTP servers transfer file names using Unicode-based UTF-8 text encoding, it's not always the case. So if you see unreadable file names when accessing your server from GoodReader, try to choose the correct text encoding in your server's record parameters.
GoodReader offers the ability to access SFTP servers. You can browse servers, download, upload, sync and delete files and entire folders.
Please read the Read Me First introduction.
GoodReader supports SFTP servers with non-Unicode national text encodings. While most modern SFTP servers transfer file names using Unicode-based UTF-8 text encoding, it's not always the case. So if you see unreadable file names when accessing your server from GoodReader, try to choose the correct text encoding in your server's record parameters.
Many SFTP servers define two different entry points into their file systems - "file system root" and "user home directory". Use the Path starts at system root switch in server record parameters to choose the correct entry point to your server's file system. The Path parameter is relative to the chosen entry point.