Mountain Duck (Mac + Google Drive): Scheduled syncing method?

[MichaelDouglas-Actor]

Disclaimer: I did some searching here & elsewhere and didn't see anyone touch on this. Also I'm far from a developer/engineer, so apologies if there's an obvious answer.

Is there a relatively simple way to schedule syncing of files/folders between Mac + Google Drive via Mountain Duck?

I've done a fair bit of research and from what I gather, rclone is the go-to method for this, and I know there are a few GUIs out there that make rclone a bit more accessible. But I would really like to avoid adding yet another app just for this purpose, especially when Mountain Duck does a great job with everything else related to syncing, and I'm really not comfortable relying on terminal commands to do this kind of thing.

My use case is:

• I'm a designer who uses a variety of Adobe apps daily, and they often run into issues when I'm working directly in files that aren't stored locally, or in files that are actively being synced.
• Sometimes I'm dealing with either very large files and/or a huge amount of files. I don't want to have an automatic sync bog down my laptop during the day while I'm actively working on it.
• My ideal scenario:
  • I work solely on files stored on my local hard drive
  • Each night, any changes to these select files/folders are synced to the corresponding files/folders in my Google Drive
  • When I plug in a specific external hard drive, any changes to those files/folders in my Google Drive are synced to the corresponding files/folders on the hard drive. (I know this one might be a bit outside the realm of MD)

Any help or tips on this would be greatly appreciated!

[identity-wael]

Mountain Duck's documented control for avoiding daytime transfers is manual Pause Sync, rather than a nightly schedule. A workflow within Mountain Duck would be:

1. In Smart Synchronization mode, mark the working folders Keep Offline and let that initial download finish.
2. Pause synchronization before editing during the day.
3. Close the Adobe documents, then resume synchronization when you're ready to upload.

The Smart Synchronization documentation describes both Keep Offline and Pause Sync. While paused, remote changes won't be detected, and Online Only files can't be opened, which is why the initial offline download matters.

Two distinctions for your intended setup: those files are still in Mountain Duck's mounted volume/local cache, not an arbitrary separate working folder on your Mac; and manual pause/resume doesn't implement your nightly or “external disk plugged in” triggers. I couldn't find a documented built-in scheduler for those triggers. If those are essential, an external scheduler/sync tool is still needed; if manually resuming at the end of the day is acceptable, the above avoids adding another application.

[dkocher]

The same applies to Integrated connect mode where you can pause synchronization.