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window.showDirectoryPicker opens up a whole new world

steveharrison.dev

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Re: window.showDirectoryPicker opens up a whole new world

#101

Post by codedokode »

shortercode wrote: post #97
codedokode wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox position is completely valid. I think a safe option would be to allow access only to a specific directory like "~/Internet files" or something like this. This way the user could grant the access but not to sensitive files. And add an option in about:config to lift the restriction for power users. Also, there is a risk of a site writing malware executable, and Linux currently has no sandboxing for such executa…

Both sides are valid. Is it a security risk? In the right conditions yes. But on the other side of it there’s user consent, limited per domain access, and the capability to do multi file editor style apps. I think the WebKit take on this is good and a better fit for most apps. They instead implemented Origin Private File System. Which is based on the same API bits but the folder is only accessible by the website. The…

> The downside is the user loses some control over the files:

Why not use some human-readable path like ~/Internet/example.com/ ? In this case the user could see the files.

Re: window.showDirectoryPicker opens up a whole new world

#103

Post by danhardman »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #94
danhardman wrote: post #93

A few people have suggested adding a blacklist for dangerous directories or validating directories are empty first. Why not just make the API create a new directory rather than selecting one? There's still a risk people create a directory in a shared location - but at least they're only risking the new directory then, right?

I think the intended use case is for things like "give my music player access to my music library" or "open a project directory in this IDE", which wouldn't work well if every app were confined to its own directory.

I guess, but it seems pretty typical to expect to install a new software or start a new project and require some form of loading/importing content in. It wouldn't exactly destroy the experience or at least the trade-off seems worth it imo

Re: window.showDirectoryPicker opens up a whole new world

#104

Post by Diti »

codedokode wrote: post #85
mschuster91 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> System and root directories cannot be selected. That desperately needs something like the Public Suffix List [1] - a community-managed list where authors of software can blacklist directories containing sensitive files or such files directly for all browsers implementing this feature. If I were to design such a list, it would include ~/.ssh, ~/.aws, ~/.config, ~/Library, ~/.{ba,z}sh{rc,_profile,_history}, ~/.m2, ~/…

Black listing is never secure. White listing is. Sadly some really smart person decided it was a good idea to store pictures and SSH keys within the same directory tree.

If you see a directory for pictures, it means XDG directories are available in your system. Then you can change their location at will, and place them as deep in your user directory as you like. Like in `~/opt/art/visual/picture`.

My Nix Home Manager settings for XDG directories:

    xdg.userDirs = {
      enable = true;
      createDirectories = true;
      desktop = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/var/desktop";
      documents = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/opt/docs";
      download = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/var/download";
      music = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/opt/art/music";
      pictures = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/opt/art/visual/picture";
      publicShare = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/var/public";
      videos = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/opt/art/visual/video";
      templates = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/opt/templates";
    };

Re: window.showDirectoryPicker opens up a whole new world

#105

Post by rcxdude »

danaris wrote: post #86
streptomycin wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what should I do if I want to make an app with this functionality? Do I have to tell users to download and run some executable? You can imagine a case where that is a bit riskier than a nicely sandboxed web app with permission to access one directory.

> Do I have to tell users to download and run some executable? Well, yes . The alternative is to give any malicious ad the ability to drive-by-download malware onto your machine.

That isn't how any of these things work, though. This kind of thing needs a permission to be granted by the user and it does not extend to third-party ads appearing on the site that it is granted to (banner ads have, for a long time, been sandboxed in iframes in the browser to prevent such exploits). I wish native applications had this level of isolation from each other.

Re: window.showDirectoryPicker opens up a whole new world

#106

Post by rcxdude »

croes wrote: post #80
rcxdude wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because a problem is not hard to imagine it doesn't mean that the problem is actually a problem in practice. It is worth asking if there are any signs of it existing for real.

I hear a lot of this "nothing has happened so far" from people who DUI before their first crash and people who use the same password on multiple sites before their first credential stuffing hack

to use your analogy you're claiming that half the population has been driving drunk for years and yet you aren't pointing to an increased rate of collisions on the road. This is not the same thing as an individual doing a dumb thing and getting away with it for a while.

Re: window.showDirectoryPicker opens up a whole new world

#107

Post by shortercode »

codedokode wrote: post #101
shortercode wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both sides are valid. Is it a security risk? In the right conditions yes. But on the other side of it there’s user consent, limited per domain access, and the capability to do multi file editor style apps. I think the WebKit take on this is good and a better fit for most apps. They instead implemented Origin Private File System. Which is based on the same API bits but the folder is only accessible by the website. The…

> The downside is the user loses some control over the files: Why not use some human-readable path like ~/Internet/example.com/ ? In this case the user could see the files.

Mmm so there’s 2 trade offs as far as I can see if you used a folder which both the user and app can access.

Firstly if an app does want a space that’s filesystem shape but does not want users/apps to have access for security or consistency reasons ( think Spotify offline storage of songs ).

Secondly if the user has access they can do the “easy” thing and just throw lots of files in, including things which are sensitive anyway.

It’s interesting to look at how Android and iOS have handled filesystem sandboxing in relation to this.

Re: window.showDirectoryPicker opens up a whole new world

#108

Post by insin »

I'm using this API in the internal [1] model-independent LLM chat app I work on at an F100, and it ruined using the Claude and ChatGPT web interfaces for me outside of work [2] because I'm used to being able to point the model at a folder so it can be directed to find and pull in relevant context itself, being able to add folder mid-chat and saying "you do it", and being able to have the model run code to work with local files of any size your browser can handle (every time we released a new version people would drag in their huge Excel files and go "still doesn't work" as we used to extract and context stuff the contents, but now it can poke around in them directly to find sheets/headers/structure and write code to do whatever they wanted).

Claude Opus on its own with filesystem tools built around the FileSystemDirectoryHandle API [3] makes for a pretty decent coding agent - I've been using the app to write itself live on its own development server ever since it got the ability to edit its own files, which is some of the most fun development I've done recently. I think writing your own harness is probably the most fun thing you can do with an LLM, which is why so many people do it - getting the model to add and then start using a new tool you had an idea for in the same chat is always fun.

[1] which seems like the best scenario for it in terms of the security/privacy issues it poses

[2] I ended up creating an MCP server rooted to a specific local directory - which I can expose to them via Cloudflare Tunnel - and a browser extension which adds a folder picker button to their chat interfaces, so I can get an almost-equivalent experience. This is really ugly in ChatGPT but works as well as I'm used to in Claude.

[3] as a bonus, the tools you write against this API will also be compatible with the Origin private file system (OPFS) API if you want to give your chats a virtual filesystem for the model to write to, or to copy user-attached files into

Re: window.showDirectoryPicker opens up a whole new world

#109

Post by croes »

rcxdude wrote: post #106
croes wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear a lot of this "nothing has happened so far" from people who DUI before their first crash and people who use the same password on multiple sites before their first credential stuffing hack

to use your analogy you're claiming that half the population has been driving drunk for years and yet you aren't pointing to an increased rate of collisions on the road. This is not the same thing as an individual doing a dumb thing and getting away with it for a while.

Could it simply be because many use their smartphone to browse the web and of those many have an Apple device and Safari based browsers don't support that API?

It's like the eraly claims that MacOS has no viruses. No the bad guys jsut didn't care enough because the ROI wasn't big enough

Re: window.showDirectoryPicker opens up a whole new world

#110

Post by croes »

streptomycin wrote: post #100
danaris wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do I have to tell users to download and run some executable? Well, yes . The alternative is to give any malicious ad the ability to drive-by-download malware onto your machine.

Well there is a permission dialog and you need to select the directory to grant access and common sensitive directories are blacklisted. A malicious ad would probably have an easier time tricking you into downloading and running an executable, which is something that has actually happened many times IRL. Worry about that before worrying about theoretical exploits that nobody has actually exploited in an API shipped i…

Did you try this?

https://web.dev/patterns/files/open-a-directory

At least it got the number of files in the selected directory including Program Files and Windows\System32

I didn't click upload, so ...

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