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Support syncing for more than just images/video #6134

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jcklpe opened this issue May 22, 2020 · 13 comments
Open

Support syncing for more than just images/video #6134

jcklpe opened this issue May 22, 2020 · 13 comments
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enhancement feature: sync and upload Syncing or uploading (that isn't auto upload specific)

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@jcklpe
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jcklpe commented May 22, 2020

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I would like to be able to sync my audiobooks from my desktop to my phone.

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like if I could use custom folder connections to sync folders between my phone and desktop for more than just images/video.

I have a folder on my phone called "audiobooks". I create a folder connection between it and a folder on my desktop called "audiobooks". I want to be able to take an audiobook file/collection-of-files/folder/etc and put it in the desktop folder and have the contents appear on my phone.

I can put stuff in the desktop folder and then go into the nextcloud app to download it from the cloud to my phone but I want automatic syncing. I used to use FolderSync to achieve this functionality but I would prefer to use just the nextcloud app since has better UI and more functionality.

@tbart
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tbart commented Mar 26, 2022

This "somehow" works for me with the current versions on client an server side.
I want a two-way sync of plain text files.
Configured the app to sync/download the folder from server and at the same time added it as custom upload as described by OP.
Pushing "synchronize" manually does not work, and files I create on Android are not even seen in the Nextcloud App below "local files".
However, if I wait a while, the sync seems to work. Pretty strange.

@tbart
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tbart commented Mar 27, 2022

OK, this is not a solution either. Constantly getting sync conflicts with the same file and size remote and locally. Something's pretty buggy here.

@jcklpe
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jcklpe commented Mar 29, 2022

@AlvaroBrey : Hey is there any possible movement on this request? It has quite a few upvotes.

@AlvaroBrey
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AlvaroBrey commented Mar 29, 2022

@AlvaroBrey : Hey is there any possible movement on this request? It has quite a few upvotes.

There's no short term plans to implement this at this point, I'm afraid. The technical aspects of this are probably complicated and we're spread thin with other priorities. Of course, PRs are always welcome.

@tbart
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tbart commented Mar 31, 2022

Just as a big fat warning:
The sync option completely emptied the folder on my phone without an appearant reason, although this worked the last days with constant merge conflict warnings (see above). The server side folder is still full.
The option to synchronize data should be disabled as long as it is known to not work (as it seems, judging by @AlvaroBrey 's comment above).
Or explicitely denote it as being beta.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not ranting that something does not work. And letting people test stuff is a good way to stabilize new features. I did not enable this feature without backups. However, it would be nice to know that it is not supposed to work as it should, right know.
I don't know if this is the case with syncing photos as well, and frankly, I'm not willing to test it, because having a backup of a photo just taken on a daily driver phone is pretty hard to achieve without relying on .. a sync option ;)

(A little OT: For those searching as well: I am not really successful in finding something FOSS that really works with webDAV/NC, 2way. Syncopoli is superb for 1way syncs over SSH and could be made to work 2way with a "newer wins" strategy. Other than that, I haven't found anything useful yet in f-droid incl. additional repos)

@va1entin
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Sorry to be this person but after a lot of trial and error and waiting for Nextcloud to support this use case better, I discovered Syncthing, which is a splendid open-source alternative for just keeping folders in sync across devices:
https://syncthing.net/
https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing

It's not perfect but worked very reliably for me now for years.

@tbart
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tbart commented Mar 31, 2022

I know - but yet another protocol + services and Nextcloud not knowing about the changes you do "under the hood" for something so simple seems like overkill to me..
Yes, I know, I could "occ files:scan" regularly, but this is a hack.
Sometimes I wish Android was just really linux so I could just mount a webDAV share and use it like "everything is a file". With a big cache so intermittent connections do not matter. This worked on an N900 over a decade ago already..
DAVx5 can mount webDAV, but only through some Storage Access Framework feature, which means "normal" apps like editors can not access it like "everything is a file".

To get back on topic:
Could the Nextcloud app somehow mount a folder so we see it locally? This could all be so easy but it seems the wheel needs to be reinvented a few times before simple tasks work again..

@va1entin
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va1entin commented Mar 31, 2022

You can mount external storages via GUI and occ. I'm not sure whether they appear in desktop/phone apps or just in the web UI. I've used it with thousands of individual SMB shares - the only problem was that the admin UI can't handle that many shares so at some point you have to use occ, at least it used to be so. See #13828
https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/configuration_files/external_storage_configuration_gui.html

@tbart
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tbart commented Mar 31, 2022

This topic is about getting files onto your phone. I want to mount shares (i.e. NC directories) on my phone, not on server side!

@va1entin
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That sounds out of scope for Nextcloud as it is not a generic mount client. Mounting it on the server and accessing it through your phone sounds like a real possibility though 😃

@tbart
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tbart commented Mar 31, 2022

I cannot use local apps for modification, however. Markor f.ex. would be ideal for editing notes, but I am unable to access them when a) syncing does not work b) mounting does not work!
Yes, I can use Nextcloud's integrated editor. But that only solves the notes problem - I'd like to have a generic solution.

@stokito
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stokito commented May 19, 2023

You can use the android app https://github.com/newhinton/extRact/ (not available yet in Play Store).
The FolderSync app also should do the job but I didn't tried it.

@jcklpe
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jcklpe commented May 20, 2023

@stokito I have used FolderSync and it's decent though the UI is not great IMO and I would prefer to not have both the NC app plus an additional app just to sync my audiobooks. That's all I really need, is a way to sync audio files, which at this time NC doesn't do.

@joshtrichards joshtrichards changed the title [Feature Request] Support file syncing for more than just images/video Support syncing for more than just images/video Oct 12, 2023
@joshtrichards joshtrichards added the feature: sync and upload Syncing or uploading (that isn't auto upload specific) label Oct 15, 2023
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