The reason Google Drive was selected was for access to an almost unlimited amount of free shared file storage, and built-in functions enabling synchronisation controlled solely from users’ devices. This enabled us to build and provide a global app platform at a very low cost.
This approach has proved to be very problematic for 2 reasons:
1. Users don’t like being asked for permission to access their Google account details (with Contacts permission), or to give access to their Google Drive folders. This is completely understandable and must be changed. There have also been many failed installations connected with the Google Drive setup process.
2. Reliability of Google Drive. There have been numerous instances of unexplained events where app file sharing settings are removed, disabling the app in question. Mabui adds sharing to files, but never removes sharing, so this appears to be an issue with Google Drive. It is both unacceptable, and probably out of our control to fix.
For these reasons we have extended the Mabui platform to replace all essential Google Drive access. This will provide a much better user experience and make app building accessible to many more people.