Have you ever wondered about mapping an iOS app-related device drive onto a published app or desktop? If such a feature were available, it would make file-sharing between published apps and desktops so much easier, right? What if iOS app-related data could be easily transferred to a Mac machine via iTunes? That would really be something! Well, I’m about to am make your day; I am happy to share that Citrix Receiver for iOS has these advantages, and more!
Let’s take a look at what’s under the hood.
“Use iPad Storage”/ “Use iPhone Storage” is an advanced setting that is available in Citrix Receiver for iOS. It is visible once the Receiver app is installed. This advanced setting performs a function similar to client drive mapping.
Note: The Sandboxing app improves security by isolating an application to prevent outside malware and other applications from interacting with the protected app. Hence, these files can’t be accessed outside the Receiver App. Files App from iOS v11 also cannot access these files.
You can access the setting by going to Settings → Advanced → Use iPad Storage, as shown in the image below; toggling on this will enable it. This setting is, by default, disabled, as shown below.
Image 1
Receiver app-related data folders on an iOS device are mapped on to Drive(c: on <device name>) in the VDA Session; Citrix Logs and RSA data are all stored here. Users can save any files in their session to this drive and access them between all ICA Sessions across different VDAs.
Image 2 shows that the switch is toggled on and the setting is enabled. Once this is done, an ICA session for a particular Host1 is launched.
Image 3 shows the explorer window of the launched ICA session where the drive that is mapped to the iOS device (c: on iPadmini) where iPadmini is the name of iOS device which is marked in red box.Here lets save a note document into this drive from the ICA session already launched. Session Hostname is marked with white box for reference.
A sample text document created on Host1 can be accessed across ICA sessions in the store. Image 4 shows another ICA session launched on Host2, where the explorer window is open and the mapped drive (c: on iPadmini) holds the file saved in the previous host’s ICA session. The Receiver App logs folder is also saved here, as shown.
Note: Citrix Logs folder will also contain detailed AETrace logs when debug level is set to 6.
Files stored under this drive can also be accessed via your iTunes account and downloaded to your Mac machine by syncing the iOS device. These files will be stored in the Receiver App Container and can be accessed via iTunes.
Note: Receiver for Android also provides a feature for users called as “Use device storage”; you can refer to this blog post for the use of this feature.
