Offline support for folders

[tobihagemann]

Similar to #44, but more complex.

To be completely honest, I don't like this feature request, but I'm always open for discussion. Here's why I'm not convinced that this feature makes sense to be implemented:

• Folders can be "infinitely large" (not really, but you know what I mean). It's just crazy to keep a whole folder up-to-date.
• It would affect "offline support for files". Navigating inside/outside of folders marked as offline, would disable/enable the ability to mark individual files as offline. Maybe it's just me, but I don't like functionality based on "remembering where you are". It could be solved with a visual hint, when you're inside a directory marked as offline:
  • Text/Icon somewhere on the screen. No idea how this could look like. Ideally you could tell with that information, which exact directory is marked as offline. It could be any parent, parent's parent, etc.
  • Icon on each file/folder. Either the icon would be ambiguous (could be individually marked or inherited by offline folder), or too complicated (separate icons for offline file/folder on each file... how would you even symbolize it?).

High complexity. Bad usability. Not worth it, in my opinion. 😄 I'd like to hear counter-arguments and how it could be elegantly solved (if possible).

[Doc-Steve]

I think offline folders / files could be accomplished with your idea to implement a LRU cache.

Have a look a dropbox offline folder implementation (unfortunately only available for Dropbox Plus users):

• you can mark any file / folder for offline usage
• they get a little symbol which shows that they are offline available
• when online no change in behaviour
• when offline you can browse through your cached files / folders - if you hit a non cached folder, it is empty with a message
• ofcourse your offline objects are always there
• there is an extra tab (additional to files&folders tab) which shows all offline objects in a new root directory for quick access and easy management
• in the extra tab you can also start a manual sync for all offline objects
• this works fine even for folders with thousands of objects and several GB

If you think of an offline object as an object that gets read when you hit synchronize, wouldn't this exactly be the behaviour of your LRU cache? :)

Even without implementing any offline file/folder management: if it would be possible to set the cache capacity to a high / unlimited range, then just a button synchronize the whole safe (access all files recursively to get them in the cache) would be a great start and be fine for many users ! 🥇

[monomadic]

Here's an example of a poster that puts technical complexity above usability. Why create the issue if you feel it's a bad idea? Other cloud storage clients have this feature and it is infinitely usable. Are we making technology for machines or people?

[tobihagemann]

@Doc-Steve Thank you for your feedback! There are certainly intersections between a LRU cache and offline support for folders. Haven't known about Dropbox's offline folder implementation (probably because I don't have Dropbox Plus :smile:), so thank you for the reference. :+1:

@robsaunders I admit that I was overwhelmed of the technical implications, when I wrote this issue a year ago. I created this issue because it was a logical "next step" to "offline support for files" #44. We like to document "everything" on GitHub and maybe even start discussions on how to solve problems. To my knowledge, "other cloud storage clients have this feature" is a bold statement. If you're also referring to Dropbox's implementation, I think it was introduced in December 2016. I couldn't have known about it back then. Maybe other clients have this feature now as well, I haven't checked them yet. If you have references other than Dropbox, please let me know! I'd love to see other implementations.

Just to be clear and I hoped that this was obvious: We are always putting security and usability first. That doesn't mean we can ignore technical complexity. I was pretty serious with seeing usability pitfalls a year ago. Maybe I've even written that feature request in a rush, I don't exactly remember. But I've changed my mind and I totally agree that this could be a quite nice feature.

Our current plan is to introduce caching #17 with version 1.3.0. We'll look into the details of offline support for files #44 and folders #45 after that.

[monomadic]

@tobihagemann gotcha :) offline support is something I use regularly, as on iOS it's pretty much impossible to 'send' multiple files at once to another app. I have language tutorial files and music for example (mp3s and aac) and at the moment I'm just using mega for things like that as it's literally hundreds of files and I can't 'send to' all of them.

Of course, this all depends on the apps ability to play those files... so I can totally see why it's a low priority compared with expanding the apps core abilities. But it's definitely a useful feature! :)

References of apps that do this? Sure. Mega, Box, (not sure about google drive as I avoid google products if I can), and there are a couple of third party iOS cloud storage managers that offline cache files on cloud storage (documents by readle can actually copy whole dirs back and forth, but it doesn't 'sync', and I also sometimes use tunebox for mp3s on iOS which does an offline cache of albums on dropbox).

Dropbox itself actually does NOT do it for some reason (single files at a time only) and it's easily the most aggravating thing about the app. Amazon cloud drive doesn't either, but that's not surprising as the app is super bare bones.

Love Cryptomator though and look forward to using it a lot more in the future. Thanks!

[Doc-Steve]

@tobihagemann Any updates on this feature request? Is there a time schedule? This feature would really be great. Thanks in advance for considering.

[Penguinjumper]

Any updates? Basically all popular cloud apps have used this for years (Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, icloud, Tresorit etc etc) and it would be a huge productivity booster. For me the missing of this feature is the main reason not to use Cryptomator for lots of stuff. Files could even stay „unencrypted“ on the device, while they are offline available, so access speed would be muuuch faster.