[thayne]

That limits your application though. It means you have to use the system file picker. For many apps that might be fine. But it means you can't have something like vim or emacs where you open files with a command. Or have an option that does something like open a sibling .h file when you are editing a .c file. Or search up the directory to find the applicable .editorconfig file.

[flangola7]

So why does it work for Mac, Android, and iOS?

[franga2000]

In fact, it doesn't work. Both Android and macOS apps will commonly ask for "full filesystem access" permissions for this exact purpose, which sort of defeats the point (for those apps at least). I don't use iOS enough to speak to how this is handled there, but the few times I've had to wrangle some files on there it made me want to smash my head into the wall.

[rcxdude]

Well, the examples given don't, generally speaking. For stuff like compiling you can do things like have the permission apply to an entire folder, though.