To display this panel in other situations, you can implement your own method to display the panel. Document-based apps normally provide this behavior for you automatically, providing the infrastructure needed to respond to the Open command in the menu. When you want to ask the user to select a document to display in a new window, display the standard Open panel modally. Opening User Documents That You Plan to Display in a New Window To choose files or directories and use them in conjunction with an already open document or window, present the panel as a sheet attached to the corresponding window. To open a document in a new window, present the Open panel modally relative to the app.
Exactly how you use this class depends on what you plan to do with the selected items: You use the NSOpenPanel class when you want to prompt the user to select one or more files or directories. The Open Panel: Getting Existing Files or Directories For more information, see the Document Picker Programming Guide. iOS apps can, however, use a UIDocumentPickerViewController to prompt the user to import, export, open, or move files to or from some areas outside the app’s sandbox. iOS apps should always save files to known locations inside their sandbox, and apps should use a custom interface when presenting those documents to the user. Important: An iOS app should never use an Open or Save panel to prompt the user for the location of a file within the app’s sandbox.